Happy National Poetry Month and more specifically, Happy Haiku-ing! This is my 15th year straight of writing a haiku every day in April and, as always, I invite you to join me for as many of those as you’d like! You might remember that last year’s theme was scientific processes, so my haiku were quite specific — glaciation, reproduction, evaporation. This year I’m staying a little looser and will just be writing, each day, on something I’m grateful for.
Starting, broadly, with spring:
Spring snowstorms give way
to warmth, pollen, pink blossoms
It’s flip flop weather!
NOTES:
— More on the specifics of haiku in the next couple of days but suffice it to say that if you’re writing three lines of observation you’re within shouting distance.
— Feel free to use the same hashtags I always use so I can follow you as you write!
— This year I’m sharing on my blog, facebook and instagram
This month our challenge was to pen a pantoum and — the only other rule — it had to include or feature an animal. Some of us used some version of this utterly lovely prompt by Pádraig Ó Tuama to get started, some of us used some version of this generator to get organized.
I drafted two — one about an owl (or rather, the absence of an owl — we didn’t get an owl in our box this spring!) and one about our dog who is, in his dotage, increasingly and utterly terrified of thunder. The dog won out this time around. And let’s face it… he usually does.
Busy week here so I’m definitely calling this a work-in-progress still, but here’s where it stands today:
Necessary and Too Much
By Liz Garton Scanlon
Forget the radar, storms bloom like magic
Disembodied over the aquifer
Each spring, these surprises are inevitable
But the dog quakes like bones of an old house
Disembodied over the aquifer
You can’t complain about rain, they say
But the dog quakes like bones of an old house
I whisper shhh shhh into folds of fur
You can’t complain about rain, they say
Gutters break promises and spill secrets
I whisper shhh shhh into folds of fur
And we shake and worry, the dog and I
Gutters break promises and spill secrets
Things can be necessary and too much
And we shake and worry, the dog and I
No thank you, we want to say but don’t
Things can be necessary and too much
Each spring, these surprises are inevitable
No thank you, we want to say but don’t
Forget the radar, storms bloom like magic
This month, my poetry sisters and I decided on epistolary poems — poems written in the form of letters, diary entries, text messages, and the like. And (because February) we thought, why not make them love letters or Valentines?
When we met over Zoom to get ourselves started, I thought I was going to write several short poems, all in the voices of the lovers (the dog lover, the sports team lover, the lover of sushi or space or Taylor Swift) — because of how language is specific and personal and contextualized in cool and important ways. So a poem to a dog is going to be ever so different than a poem to the Packers or Yankees — all of them wholly unique and special.
But in the end, all that fell away and what kept coming up for me was the actual writing of letters, the actual function of writing instead of speaking, the fact that for so many of us the written word is not just tender or loving, but necessary — the only way.
So, sorry to the dog lovers and falling star followers among us. This is quieter and simpler and more general, maybe, than all of that…
Oh, Dear One,
I am writing
to tell you
all the things
I cannot say
I am writing
with my heart
in my throat
like a moth
I am putting
ink between us
like a sheen
on the surface
of a pond,
the woven silk
of an orb-web
waiting for you
I am asking
which of us
will be unraveled,
will come undone?
_______________________________________________________________________________________
For more love letters, go to:
Kelly Tanita Laura Sara Mary-Lee Tricia
PS: Would you like to write with us next month? In March, we are writing Pantoums and all that we ask is that your poem includes, refers to, or incorporates an animal! Fun, right? See you then!
Hello, friends. I couldn’t be gladder to be back with my Poetry Sisters (and you all!) for another year of poetry prompts. We are kicking off 2024 with ekphrastic poems, inspired by the truly incredible paper artistry performed by Roberto Benavidez. His sculptures are, in fact, piñatas but are so exquisite (and imaginative) (and otherworldly) that surely, I thought, they’re never actually hung and hit, right? Well, sometimes they are, and what that says about the magic of transformation (last year’s theme dies hard!) and the necessary willingness of any creator to make and then let go? I am agog.
I fear my rather last minute poem comes nowhere near to living up to the inspiration, but what a lovely rabbit hole this has been to stumble upon. Hope you enjoy the exploration of his work as much I have.
Oh, and join us next month if you’d like — we’ll be writing epistolary poems that are (in some form or another) love letters or Valentines! Be safe and well, all — and see you then!
I feel so lucky to have spent another year writing and talking about poetry with my poetry sisters. For all of our lives and worries and distance, we are able to do this one small thing — to make sense of something, to make something make sense once a month. I’m so grateful.
I took that as my starting point, focused on transformation (our theme for the year) and called it GASTRONOMY since I also had a particular challenge to hone on scientific processes. So, here goes and thanks for being with us this year, everyone.
Gastronomy
An Elfchen
Soup
Stovetop alchemy
Take stock first
Add what you have
Plenty
This month, we had the pleasure of writing “In the style of…” Valerie Worth. A spare, careful, tender observer of things, Valerie Worth may have been best known for her Small Poems (and all the subsequent collections of small poems that followed!)
I find this kind of work hugely satisfying to read and to write (and, I know, the hugely reads a bit ironic since we’re talking about very, very spare work.) I so love zooming in and attending to something — anything — with a focus so particular it pretty much is the same as love.
As always, our larger thematic focus for the year is transformation, and I have been looking through a slightly more scientific lens, too, using a scientific term or process to further describe or define what’s happening in each of my poems. (Although I’ve admittedly been a little more loosey goosey around that than I intended to be.)
Anyway, here are two of the handful of poems I tried this week.
Flour Scoop
(solder/a verb)
Tin can cut
on the bias
becomes
a scoop
at once edgy
and old
fashioned
Book Mark
(cleave/a verb)
A dog-eared page
creased like a collar,
like a paper crane,
waits for the end
of the day to come
undone, to fly open
and let loose
all the stories
Our poetry assignment this month was tricky — a poetic game of sorts called a Bouts-Rimés. Each of us contributed not just rhyming words, but purposefully incongruent ones, and we were then asked to write sonnets using those very words as the end rhymes.
Our list of words included:
profuse/abtruse
chartreuse/truce
incline/shine
resign/supine
various/gregarious
hilarious/precarious
ceasefire/quagmire
higher/dryer
transform/barnstorm
uniform/conform
humility/futility
nobility, tranquility
perturb/superb
reverb/disturb
And I chose to write a Shakespearean sonnet, which required me to pluck 2 words from every set of four. (Plus, as a reminder, our overall topic this year is transformation and my own personal challenge has been to focus on a scientific process each time. There are several in this poem, most obviously waxing, waning and rising.) Anyway, here goes…
The Moon and the Rising Sea
A drama queen, a harlequin abstruse.
Look here, she’s dark, and then she takes a shine
to you, her focus full, her face chartreuse.
You’re helpless at her feet and you resign
yourself, become – like her! – gregarious,
till sailors weep, beg for a ceasefire,
till shores erode, become precarious.
You carry on, rising ever higher
beyond her ruling reach, your role transforms.
Now we reflect her new futility —
we push you back and hope that you’ll conform,
we beg the gods for some tranquility.
Who broke what worked, who stirred, perturbed
the peace? It’s us, our voices, waves, reverb.
Finally, we invite you to join us next month as we write “In the Style of…” Valerie Worth — what fun! Be well, all. That’s not easy right now but I wish it for you all.
This month’s challenge was the diminishing verse or pruning poem. They’re very short, quite challenging and, to my mind, a little forced or awkward. But! Who are we to back down from a challenge?
So, here’s the deal — there’s no real rule except that the end word of each line is a shorter variation on the initial end word. Start with a longer blend and take away a letter (or a sound) each time. You’ll see what I mean…
Now, these poems very clearly fulfill our larger 2023 theme of transformation, just by the very nature of the pruning and diminishing. I tried to use transformation in my subject matter, too, since each poem focuses on the pivotal moments of change in a fairy tale. As for my more particular goal to write about a scientific process each time, I think for this month we’ll call it pruning and be satisfied, yes?
Here goes!
Frog Prince in the Lily Pond
Each ribbit rose, was swallowed
Instead he brooded, wallowed
Until the princess wooed, allowed
Cinderella After the Ball
Awaiting the call from Prince Charming
The sisters weren’t helping but harming
but her delicate feet were dis-arming!
Sleeping Beauty Discovered
Young beauty concealed by the bramble
Brave prince set out on a ramble
Resulting in happily ever amble
And thanks to the wonderful Jama for hosting Poetry Friday this week at Alphabet Soup!
Oh, and hey… interested in joining our challenge next month? We’ll be writing bouts rhymes, a form in which the poet starts with the rhyming end words first, and then fills in the rest of the poem around those rhymes. Ha! Have at it, everyone!
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?
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
I pluck sunrise
petal by every petal
(there goes
the one that got away)
and I sing
in different languages
as the light shifts,
trees so orange
the road turns blue
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:
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
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.
