I've been having trouble wrapping my head around a new challenge, as I'm still having fun thinking about last week's stretch, writing the homophoem. (Check out the comments of the post to see all the great poems folks shared.)
Since we've been writing to form the last few weeks, I thought we'd take a topic this week. Did you happen to hear the NPR story last week about the photo historian who found an archive of more than 14,000 photos taken by Charles W. Cushman? Cushman began using Kodachrome soon after it came out and used it to capture the world in ways it had never been seen before.
You can hear the story at The Found Archive of Charles W. Cushman. Better yet, you can see some of the photos at Lost and Found: Discover a Black-and-White Era in Full Color.
Where is all this leading? I'm thinking about the power of a photograph. Do you have one you treasure? Does it capture a person or a place? What do you love about? Why does it move you?
Let's write about photographs this week. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll share the results in time for Poetry Friday.
Mom
ReplyDeleteShe’s in the backyard, tilting up her head
the way she did when she was a teen.
It’s the golden hour and the light on her face
is golden. The light in her face is golden,
with a smile that says everything, the gladness
of breathing just then in the backyard
with its stubby grass and a blue swing set.
It’s a small photo, taken with a bad camera.
It sits on my bookshelf, smiling at the world.
—Kate Coombs, 2012
all rights reserved
Hi Tricia ~ knew just the photo I would use when I saw this stretch...one taken when my mom was hospitalized for TB.
ReplyDeleteLURKS INSIDE
It's pinned to wire hanger over
your desk, along with others
that depict a younger you,
probably 3-years-old, curled
up on chair, framed by leafy
wallpaper, Mary Janes poking
their shiny black faces from
beneath your dress, hands
perched upon lap, head slightly
tilted, cheek hugging lacey
collared shoulder, wispy
hair held back by wee barrette,
a shy smile surely egged on by
eager photographer, so you would
hardly know the sadness that
lurks inside that innocent heart.
© Carol Weis 2012, all rights reserved
AN UNCOMFORTABLE MORNING
ReplyDeleteMissing teeth,
Nappy head,
Today's the day
I've come to dread.
Plastic smile,
Itchy collar,
All I want to do
is holler.
If classmates see this
I'm sure they'll laugh
at my 1st grade photograph.
(c) Charles Waters 2012 all rights reserved.
For One Day
ReplyDeleteIt only happened once
many many years ago
before I was alive.
(My father told me, so I know.)
All bicycles grew giant wings
and children pedaled through the sky
making sounds like birds and planes.
For one day, everyone could fly.
My dad made friends with honking geese.
They taught him how to catch a breeze.
He still remembers how it felt
to skim the tops of Grandma’s trees.
I see it in his eyes sometimes.
He’ll watch me and “remember when.”
I ride my own bike every day.
For one day…
…bikes will fly again.
© Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
(The photograph that this comes from is on my blog today - http://www.poemfarm.amylv.com/2012/09/for-one-day-writing-from-photograph.html)
Round Frame
ReplyDeleteMy father’s past lies hidden in a round frame.
The child there has plump cheeks,
uncolored eyes; a heavy Russian hat
perches awkwardly on his baby curls.
He stares out at me, through me, daring me
to take away his manufactured birth
in Connecticut. All those years Ekaterinoslav
was lost to me, when I could have celebrated
Ukrainian winters, learned words of love,
fashion, passion, paternity;
how to season the fish with pepper, not sugar;
how to cut the farfl from flat sheets of dough.
All I had was New Haven.
Would I go there now, when Ekaterinoslav
no longer exists; go and see
what Cossacks, Hitler, Chernobyl could not conquer,
the little shtetl my father alone destroyed
by never speaking its name?
No, I shall stay here, at home, instead,
gazing back at the boy who stares at me,
whisper to him, through him, dare him,
“Tell me the story of Ekaterinoslav,”
till one day the picture itself speaks.
©2012 Jane Yolen, from my new collection of poems:EKATERINOSLAV:One Family’s Passage to America, A Memoir in Verse (Holy Cow! Press) All rights reserved
A fine balance
ReplyDeleteThis is hardly a poem—though it ought to be, because Margaret deserved poetry. More than that, she deserved love. Which she got, in a way—from her sister—but not from the rest of us, who were cut off—cut-out/excluded/abandoned, really—completely unaware of her sad, slow death.
Why? Well, as near as I can tell, Margaret was a beautiful, silent woman, who confided in no one except her sister. Who spoke to no one, really, except this sister, a sister who didn’t tell anyone—family, friends, neighbors—she was rotting away in a rundown nursing home in northeast Philadelphia, toothless and hairless, breathless almost, except for the thin flow of oxygen delivered through a deteriorating trach.
A beautiful woman in a bed full of pus and puke, blood and lice, hope and desperation. So… what better tribute can I offer than this belated eulogy to a sad, sweet woman I knew more in death than life? And Margaret was a beauty, trust me. I’ve seen her portrait, the portrait of a satin-skinned young woman in a pale pink dress… with a visage like my father’s and a faraway look in her jade-green eyes.
Thanks so much for this prompt. You know photos are one of my favorite ways to approach poetry. I am catching up with one of your older prompts with trimeric related to one of my photos . Happy Friday!!
ReplyDelete