Monday Poetry Stretch - Macaronic Verse

Back in 2011 we wrote poems in the form of macaronic verse. It's been a long time, so this seems like a good time to revisit the form. The Handbook of Poetic Forms defines macaronic verse in this fashion.

Macaronic verse is a peculiar, rare and often comic form of poetry that sometimes borders on nonsense. It is a mixture of two (or more) languages in a poem, in which the poet usually subjects one language to the grammatical laws of another to make people laugh.

Poetry Base describes macaronic verse this way.

The definition is a poem in a mixture of two languages, one of them preferably Latin. Usually the mixture of languages is a bit absurd. The word of one language may be terminated with common endings in the other.

So, your challenge for this week is to write a poem that uses more than one language. I hope you will join me this week in writing macaronic verse. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Friday - The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

It's been one week since posting a poem about the sand, and I'm still dreaming of the sea.

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
      And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
      And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
      And the tide rises, the tide falls.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong at Poetry for Children. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Mask/Persona Poem

In my Poetry Friday post I shared a poem from the book DOGS AND DRAGONS, TREES AND DREAMS by Karla Kuskin.

Published in 1980, Kuskin wrote:

An Introduction Children May Feel Free To Ignore 

The double purpose of this introduction is to bring together poems I wrote for children between 1958 and 1975 and to discuss the process of introducing poetry to children.

Throughout the book the poems are prefaced with insights into the nature of reading, writing, and appreciating poetry. Here's an example.

As you read a poem aloud listen to the sounds of the words. They have infinite variety. There are short, brittle sounds, soft rolling sounds, stuttering sounds and the sibilance of many s's, long liquid sounds flowing with o's. In some poems there is not so much sense as sound.

Near the end of the book Kuskin shares a number of mask or persona poems. The preface to this collection reads:

The following five poems do not have titles. As you read each poem you will figure out what it is describing. Each one tells how it would feel to be something other than yourself.

I've read a lot of descriptions of mask poems. I think I like this one best. Here's one of the poems she shared.

If you,
Like me,
Were made of fur
And sun warmed you,
Like me,
You'd purr.

You can read more about persona poems (and teaching them) at the Poetry Foundation.

I hope you will join me this week in writing a mask/persona poem. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Friday - Sitting in the Sand

Last week I left Virginia and made the long road trip to NY. Ten+ hours in a car is not my idea of fun. However, getting home is always lovely. I had a nice visit with my mother, who happens to be celebrating her 85th birthday today, and my brother and his family. I drove home earlier this week in what at times were torrential downpours.

My trips to western NY always include a trip to Lake Ontario to walk on the pier. I take my mother with me and push her in her wheelchair. These walks are quite nostalgic, as she tells me all about growing up in the town of Summerville on the lake.

I'll be heading back in a month for my niece's wedding, which means I probably won't see the ocean this summer unless I take time off to make a day trip. Just like my visits to the lake, I find so much peace and comfort in the water.

Today I'm sharing a poem from a book I found last week in a library discard pile. That book is DOGS AND DRAGONS, TREES AND DREAMS by Karla Kuskin.

Sitting in the Sand
by Karla Kuskin

Sitting in the sand and the sea comes up
So you put your hands together
And you use them like a cup
And you dip them in the water
With a scooping kind of motion
And before the sea goes out again
You have a sip of ocean.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference. Happy poetry Friday friends.

Monday Poetry Stretch - Faith and Hope

I love the poems that were shared as part of last week's stretch to write about America. I understand the sentiments of both pride and disappointment. What came out in some of the comments and conversations I had afterwards is that even though we are discouraged, we have not lost hope.

A few years back when I traveled to China, I decided to get a tattoo to commemorate my trip. I knew exactly what I wanted. This is my tattoo.

Traditionally, Chinese characters were read from top to bottom and right to left. However, in modern times the western approach to reading from left to right and top to bottom is often used. Read in this fashion, the characters represent faith, hope, and love. Some days it's particularly hard to keep the faith and have hope. Whenever I forget this I need only look in the mirror, my tattoo a gentle reminder to press on. 

This seems like the moment to write about faith, hope, or both.  I do hope you will join me this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.