Poetry Project — October, 2025

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Burning Haibun. What were we thinking???
We don’t know. We really don’t
We can’t even remember which of us came up with the idea and now I’ve got the sickly feeling it was me.

Here’s the thing. The burning haibun (a form created by Torrin A. Greathouse) doesn’t sound that bad. (Spoiler: It is.)

You start with a prose poem (that takes us on an interior journey of sorts) and then “burn it down” (through erasure) into a free verse poem that you, in turn, “burn down” (through erasure) into a haiku.

Oh, and also there should be some real burning in the poems.
Oh, and the theme or meaning of each segment should twist or reverse or reorient or something.

Actually maybe it does sound that bad!
But y’know what? We did it. We did it anyway!
These are sloppy and probably break half the rules, but so be it!

(Oh, and I almost forgot our overarching 2025 theme of “conversation”. What does this have to do with that? Heck if I know! I guess the three segments are talking to each other. And we complained to each other a lot while writing. That counts, right? Anyway… onward!)

 

 

And now, for my slightly easier-to-read versions:

 

I Forget: A Burning Haibun
By Liz Garton Scanlon

I

I forget to put the car in park, watch it careen down a steep hill without logic or care, rattling and veering, I am running after it, picking up speed till my cheeks blaze and lungs burn. By the time I reach the bottom, only the license plates are left. I feel relieved, honestly – strangely ok with this hot, hulking loss of my own making. I turn and walk away. That thing, I say to the night, was the source of all my suffering. I say it even though I don’t believe it. I’m not sure it was the source of much, that car. Unless pain is things lurching out of control and the speed of darkness this time of year and the great grave injustices of the world. Unless it is the fact that I miss so many people all of the time. And that there’s the never-ending chase, riddled with regrets and worries, gasping for breath. And the things I should’ve said but didn’t. The things I wish I hadn’t said. How should I know the root cause of anything or why I’m in this state or what really hurts and why? Can’t a car veering out of control be to blame for my own small humanness? Can’t walking away be the cure?

II

I forget to watch.

Without logic,
I pick up speed,
blaze and burn
the plates.

My turn to suffer.
(The pain is grave.)

I miss the time, the chase,
and the things I didn’t cause.

What really hurts:
Veering out of control.
Blame. Humanness. Walking away.

III

I forget logic,
pick up things I hurt
out of humanness

 

OK, I’m exhausted. Here, go read the others!!
Tanita
Tricia
Sara
Laura
Mary Lee

 

And Jone is hosting Poetry Friday today — thanks, Jone!

By the way, next month we’re trying “overheard” poems. Eavesdropping’s easy compared to burning haibun! Join us!

Poetry Project — September, 2025

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I’m in under the wire this month, with a draft of a tritina.

My goal was to write around our theme of the year (conversation) and, in particular, conversation with the planet, which we seem to be forgetting how to do at the moment.

But here’s why it’s a draft. I wanted all three repeating words to be homographs that I could use in different ways as different parts of speech. Land and sound — check. Listen — not so much. I’d like to try this with a different third word. Also, it’s such a heavy lift to make a tritina read naturally and this isn’t there yet.

But it’s mid-morning on Poetry Friday so here goes. Thanks for reading.

We Are
Liz Garton Scanlon

untethered birds, frantic and spinning, looking to land
in the tender cups of trees, to roost safe and sound.
But there’s noise and fire everywhere now: listen.

We are broken rivers, craning our necks to listen
for the distant sea, dragging ourselves over land,
too drained to rush headlong, to babble, to sound

out the way. We are forests and calved ice, the sound
of bats and bees. Why not lean into the wind and listen
to the whole wild song of us as we lift and as we land.

Watch that your boots land soundlessly. Shh. Listen.

 

You can read my pals’ poems here:
Tanita
Tricia
Mary Lee
Sara
Laura

And the wonderful Amy at The Poem Farm is hosting Poetry Friday today.

That’s all for now. Take care, friends.

Poetry Project — August, 2025

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Hey friends — I don’t know what happened to summer, but whoosh! I got so turned around I missed last month’s prompt, which means I missed you too! So. As a reminder, my poetry sisters and I are working with an overarching theme of conversation this year, and this month we’re being especially overt about it. We read Talk to Me, Poem. I Think I Got the Blues. by Nikki Giovanni, and decided to talk right back at it!

Nikki’s poem starts off:
Talk to me, Poem
I’m all alone
Nobody understands what I’m saying

As the kids would say, hashtag relatable.
So, here goes, Nikki!

I Hear You, Nikki. Nobody Understands Me, Either.
After Nikki Giovanni’s Talk to Me, Poem
By Liz Garton Scanlon

Um, hey… Nikki? It’s me, Poem
Man, it’s good to hear your voice

I got myself off track there for a while
Got mixed up with the wrong sort of folk
Who wrote papers with footnotes about me
And gave lectures about me
And earned degrees and money off of me
But I swear, Nikki, they didn’t sing
Or dance or cry with me
They didn’t love me, not even a little

So I’ve actually been back around here
I’ve been incognito, if you know what I mean
I’ve been wearing a hat
That’s why you haven’t seen me
That’s why you thought
I’d gotten myself lost
Or locked up

But I’ve been here, I’ve been around
Especially early, walking, before most anyone is up
‘Cept the birds and the street sweeper
And that guy who looks like he never went to bed
He’s up still, with me and the sun
Do you hear that, Nikki?
He’s humming

 

Read the others here:
Tricia
Tanita
Laura
Mary Lee
Sara

Poetry Friday is being graciously hosted by Karen Edmisten this month.

And, for those interested in joining us next month, we’ll be writing tritinas. Invented by poet Marie Ponsot, this less restrictive sibling of the sestina uses three repeated words to end three tercets, in the order of 123, 312, 231, with a final line, which acts as the envoi, and features all three words in the order they appeared in the first stanza. (And, continuing with our theme, we’re writing poetry in conversation, whatever that means to you!)

Poetry Project — June, 2025

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The prompt: A Raccontino (this form is essentially Golden Shovel meets rhymed verse)
The theme of the year: Conversation
The admission: This is very very very last minute and I’m squeaking in under the wire. But ok! I’m here! Read on!

 

Can you Listen
“Can you listen without interpreting, without your prejudices interfering –
listen as you may listen to the song of a bird?” – Krishnamurti, Beyond Violence 

Each day I go without
noise and bluster and seismic news,
my heart does its own interpreting,
my lungs take air in like a bruise 

Each day I go without
the noise and rather choose
to cut an orange, pick up your
call, and listen for the muse 

 I feel something slip away, the prejudices
love subdues
and in their place, only poems interfering
with clover, birdsong, morning dew 

 

Read the others here:
Tanita (who is also this week’s gracious Poetry Friday host!)
Tricia
Sara
Mary Lee
Laura

Poetry Project — May 2025

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Whoa, boy. If there is a form of poetry that takes your hand and leads you off the garden path completely, it’s the Golden Shovel. In case you need a refresher, here’s how one works:

First, you choose a line from a poem you admire or want to tip your hat to. In this case, my poetry sisters and I agreed to pluck something from Elizabeth Bishop’s Letter to NY, which is such a fine, fine poem that basically begs to be read aloud. The line I chose was “and the meter glares like a moral owl” because of the owl, yes, but in particular the moral owl, because what a beautiful, curious, steamy little phrase to tuck into this conversational list of city comings and goings.

OK, next, you use each word in the borrowed line as the endpoints for the lines that will make up a new poem of your own. Practically, this just means writing the Elizabeth Bishop line vertically, one word at a time, down the right hand side of the paper, and writing to those words.

Now, see my note above regarding the garden path! There is something about having to write to what feel like random floating words on the outside edge of the paper that just removes control completely. It’s kind of a trip. Thanks for reading along to see where I landed.

Oh, PS — I used another partial line from Bishop’s poem as my title. Just for kicks.

 

Loud but Somehow Dim
A Golden Shovel after Elizabeth Bishop’s Letter to NY
Liz Garton Scanlon

I tick off my worst qualities, start with “lack of confidence” and
“wasting time”. (The list capitalizes on both of these.) The
list measures me against myself, operates as a meter

keeping count without context or clemency. The list glares
at me with ballpointed fury, like I should do better, like
my lack of imagination is the problem. Like a list (a

list like this) should have footnotes and moral
arguments, like I should play badger. Or snake. Or owl.

 

Read all the others here:
Sara
Laura
Tricia
Tanita
Mary Lee

And enjoy Poetry Friday at Karen Edmisten’s blog today!

Haiku 30 — April 30, 2025

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And just like that, April’s a wrap. Thanks for joining me, friends, whether you read along or wrote a few haiku yourselves. Each year, even as I have to scratch my lines out last minute at bedtime, even as I press enter on a real clunker or two, I’m grateful for the practice, and for the reminder that magic is everywhere I’m willing to notice it.

I have to admit that this year there were days that magic felt like quite a stretch. There is so much noise and cruelty and recklessness at play. So much dismantling of what we know is good and right and true. So much that feels disheartening and disempowering.

So. We resist that. We try ever harder. We listen, we reach out, we stand up, we insist, we promise, we embrace, we witness, we write. It’s what we do.

Haiku 30
April 30, 2025

Please pay attention
to this most expressive plant:
She talks with her hands

 

 

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#NationalPoetryMonth

Haiku 27 — April 27, 2025

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Look at this little slip of a thing who joined me on my stroll around the neighborhood today (until she turned around and trotted home). It was just after I’d been introduced to the sweetest old Chesapeake Bay retriever with rheumy eyes, and right before I met a woman pressing seaglass into wet concrete to make a stepping stone. I love the things people and their pets get up to.

Haiku 27
April 27, 2025

A cat joined my walk
Like a parenthetical
(and made it mean more)

 

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#NationalPoetryMonth