It’s day two, folks. Is it just me or does every day last a very, very long time now?
I’m realizing that my haiku are going to have a decidedly quarantined flavor this year, but ok. This is where we are.
Speaking of which, this morning I felt just impossibly jittery and pent up. What to do? Well, I set off on a such a long walk that my dog looked at me over his shoulder several times in utter confusion. But it was all worth it because I felt way more myself when I landed back at home.
Plus, I got this picture and this poem out of it. So. Not a bad morning, all in all.
Haiku 2
April 2, 2020
Seen from a distance
everything is like a dream
I want to get close
No matter what is going on in the world, it is STILL National Poetry Month, starting right now, and I don’t know about you, but I need poetry like I need oxygen at this point.
For one thing, it means that March — that godforsaken, endless, Groundhog Day-of-a-month is finally over. But also, poetry. Poetry! Validation, empathy, connection and the balm of beauty. Thank goodness.
This will be the 11th year in a row for me to write and share a haiku every day in April. I would love for you to join me if you’d like. No pressure to share publicly, but you’re welcome to. I plan to post on facebook, Twitter, Instagram and my poor, abandoned blog, so you’ll be able to join me anywhere.
I will always use three hashtags — #nationalpoetrymonth #30daysofhaiku #lizsharespoem — feel free to use them as well, along with your own. Or not. Whatever.
Now, about the form. Haiku are tiny, perfect snapshots of ideas or images or moments. They’re comprised of 3 lines of — at least in modern-day, Western haiku — 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables respectively. There’s a bunch of other stuff I can say about the form, but I’ll scatter those tidbits throughout the month, but let me just add here that I don’t care what rules you follow or don’t. The point isn’t to be obedient — it’s to be inspired.
Anyway, this has gotten ridiculously long-winded, which is the opposite of haiku. So let’s get to the poem-making itself. Mine will often be accompanied by a photo and will often be typed, like today’s. Here goes, enjoy, stay well…
Haiku 1
April 1, 2020
Volunteer daisies
spread like sun across the yard
Light can’t be contained
On the final Friday of February I ran on a busy trail, met friends at a coffeehouse, attended a political event.
Today — the final Friday of March — I’ll be at home in my very little bungalow, trying to work in that way we all try to work now, getting out to walk or pull weeds when I can, listening to my spouse and grown kids on their various conference calls and Netflix parties.
I know we’re hearing a lot about how people aren’t doing things right in response to this utterly devastating global health crisis, but what amazes me is how well people are doing. How schools closed and kids came home, how shops shuttered, how we stopped seeing grandparents first and then co-workers and then friends. How we are finding our humanity, our tenderness, our senses of humor. How, oddly, we’re deepening connections.
Poetry has been all about that forever, of course. We’re just clunky people and it takes us awhile to catch up. So. Here we are. I started last week posting online poetry prompts for teachers, librarians, parents and kids suddenly in the midst of a distance learning experiment they didn’t expect. My first lesson was on writing gratitude etherees. Then, just last night, I posted another one on cinquains.
Now it’s Poetry Friday, and my Poetry Sisters and I have a prompt to attend to. It’s a loose one — “classic” — no particular topic or form. So I built on the work I’d been doing for my video and I wrote some cinquains. (OK, they’re not technically classic and certainly not ancient — they were first seen around 1915 — but I used the word “classic” in that conversational way we do, so I think it counts? Anyway…)
In my video prompt I suggested folks use the form to explore things they’re a little afraid of, things that worry them or that they don’t like. I know this sounds glass-half-empty, but we’d done gratitude the week before and, hey, a person’s got feelings, right?
So as much as I’d like to say I used this exercise as an escape, here are my Novel Coronavirus Cinquains for your reading pleasure.
Classic
Quarantino =
Sourdough starter and
Clorox in toilet paper tubes
on Zoom
Classic
Disinfectant=
Wash your hands while singing
It’s the End of the World As We
Know It
Classic
Social distance =
Next door, across the street
Over the phone but still right here
Hi, friend
Classic
Insomnia =
Why can’t I catch my breath
Am I sick or well? Am I safe?
Oh, moon
Classic
Optimism =
We can do this, come back
Like wisteria vines in spring
Bloom. Heal.
For more classics, visit my pals here: Laura Sara Tanita
Tricia
Kelly
Andi
Rebecca
And you can find all the Poetry Friday posts at The Opposite of Indifference!
Enjoy, and please friends, be safe and well.
So, one of our assignments this year (2020) is to look back with hindsight. Get it?
We decided it would be fun to reflect upon old work, have a conversation with it, even.
So this month I chose the tanka we wrote in February 2018, which were actually inspired by sonnets our friends had written the month before. (One of those gifts that keeps on giving!)
Rather than edit or change them (I actually still quite like them!), I thought I’d add to my collection of organ tanka. So that’s what I’ve got here — three tanka inspired by the heart, the liver, and the kidneys. Enjoy!
The Heart
Oh, Bedazzled Heart,
drama queen of the body!
Beneath her make-up,
she’s just grit and elbow grease –
punching that time clock, thump thump.
The Liver
Lily-livered lobes
hiding behind the rib cage –
still vulnerable,
still within reach of ruin,
poor poisoned apples.
The Kidneys
Curled in on yourselves,
busy little kidney beans
working like cheesecloth
keep clean the blood, keep busy
the body for tomorrow.
I’ve been writing with my poetry sisters (Tricia, Kelly, Tanita, Laura, Andi, and Sara for a long, long time now (and we’ve recently welcomed Sara’s daughter, Rebecca). During this past year, though, the wheels came off a couple of times. I missed posting at least twice, and we tossed the towel in on a bigger project that was not feeling productive or poetic or, well, fun.
Still, the new year rolls around and I yearn for poetry plans. I yearn for the inspiration and the accountability. And, mostly, for the camaraderie. It turns out we all do!
So, here we go again with a few new twists (as always). For one, we’ll be posting on the last Friday of each month instead of the first (and that may or may not be because we simply didn’t have our acts together earlier this month). Also, we’ve got a couple of themes we’ll revisit several times this year. Two of those are vision puns (thank you, 2020) — foresight and hindsight. What a time — at the end of one decade and the beginning of another to look forward and back, right?
And that’s where we’re starting today — with foresight in the shape of a haiku. Apologies that mine emerged a little wet and dark — I guess I felt resistant to leaving this present moment! Anyway, here goes — and happy new year, friends. May the poetic moments abound…
Haiku
January, 2020
Today’s storm ignores
the foresight of umbrellas;
drops fall as they may
So, I’ve written villanelles before. Am I growing dumb or just rusty? I don’t know, but I worked on this right up until the last minute and it’s still not “done” (whatever that is).
Anyway, our assignment: A villanelle (which, if you aren’t familiar, is a 19-line poem consisting of 5 tercets and a quatrain with two repeating lines and a set rhyme scheme so that the whole thing starts to feel, well, at best, dreamy.) I don’t think I achieved that this time around but it’s an exercise, right?
OH — and our theme was winter — we had to use a few agreed-upon words and the ones I fit in were “rime” and “gust.” Here goes:
No Sense
By Liz Garton Scanlon
No sense waiting for the snow to fall
(and if it does it sure won’t stick).
We’re too temperate for squalls
where windows ring and cold fronts stall,
where rime’s like lichen, white and thick.
No sense waiting for the snow to fall –
this is no Pole, no Montreal.
Our winter’s but a gusty trick,
we’re too temperate for squalls,
for inclement weather protocols.
Set down your firewood and pick –
no sense waiting for the snow to fall.
We’re no less sky-bound or in thrall,
but it’s sunshine here that makes us tick.
We’re too temperate for squalls,
dropping everything when nature calls,
shutters open, heartbeats quick.
Never waiting for the snow to fall –
we’re too temperate for squalls.
We’ve been assigned a pastoral this month — a poem both aware of the wild world but also naive to the complexities of our relationship with it.
I LOVE this prompt. I want to write a whole book full of pastorals. But I’m just back from a vacation (a dreamy one, to France) and am already off at a book festival, busy polishing up my slides for tomorrow’s school visit. So, I almost bailed.
But then Sara suggested I just post a pretty picture from France and I thought ok, c’mon, I can write a poem to go with one of those pictures. So I did.
Sunflowers
Tempted by the golden morning,
we step off the train into a language
we don’t speak and a hope
we don’t honestly possess
and I imagine this is what Van Gogh felt,
facing a field of sunflowers, bright
and wild until they went to seed.
But still, the stems are milky,
the paint dries yellow,
and we understand
enough to get by.
Our prompt?
To write a poem comparing a snake to something it isn’t usually compared to.
In 8 lines.
Which means I basically broke all the rules.
But here goes….
Small World
By Liz Garton Scanlon
The snake as metaphor spells out the length
(the tight twistiness ) of a garden hose
the forked tongue Vicky and the other girls
use in the locker room at school
the skin the child sheds, becoming
the adolescent, becoming herself.
The snake as metaphor tempts in the garden
rattles a desert warning, swallows life whole.
Nobody mentions the organs lined up thin and narrow
as kindergartners, beating, breathing, trying to fit in
Summer time often means travel time, so it made sense to use trip pics as our poetry source this month.
More specifically, Sara offered up three images from a trip she made to Israel, all of which feature rock or stone structures. Beyond that, there were no specifications so you’ll find that our work really varies this month.
Here’s mine from the Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem…
The Wailing
By Liz Garton Scanlon
We stand shoulder
to shoulder, the tiny
and the tall, the mighty
and the meek, the feared
and the beloved, we stand
like blades of grass, like warp
yarns, each absolutely singular
yet woven together and wailing,
wailing into the cracks of our lives
Up this month — triolets! Little French poems of eight lines — one of them repeating thrice so the reader feels awash in it — plus a rhyme scheme and an awareness of syllabics.
We’re also going with the theme HEAT because, well, summer.
Here goes:
I Put My Daughter on a Plane
She slipped through folds in time and space
(it is tomorrow there already!)
and dropped her maps, her plans misplaced –
who needs them in this state of grace
where who-you-were’s left not a trace?
Like summer sun, white-hot and steady,
she slipped through folds in time and space
and it’s tomorrow there already!
