Monday Poetry Stretch - Looking Forward, Looking Back

Another year is ending and a new one beginning. It seems the perfect time to try our hand at writing a reverso.

The form, invented by Marilyn Singer, is described by the poet in this way.

A reverso is two poems in one. Read the first down and it says one thing. Read it back up, with changes just in punctuation and capitalization, and it's a different poem. 

Here's an example Singer provides in her note about the form.

A cat without a chair: incomplete

Incomplete: a chair without a cat.

The coolest thing about these is that whether you are reading them forwards or backwards, they work! You can learn more about the reverso and the book that started it all by checking out this post at Seven Imp and this post at Writing and Ruminating.

So, what do you think? It seems an impossible task, but perhaps we could try writing some short poems similar to Marilyn's example. That, my friends, is the challenge. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Friday - Snowy Owl Near Ocean Shores

If you know OWL MOON by Jane Yolen, you'll want to follow along with Owl Count 2014, which begins at midnight on December 14th. Heidi Stemple will be live tweeting (perhaps on this occasion it should be called hooting) @heidieys and reporting on the Facebook page. In honor of the count, I'm sharing this lovely poem.

Snowy Owl Near Ocean Shores
by Duane Niatum

A castaway blown south from the arctic tundra
sits on a stump in an abandoned farmer’s field.
Beyond the dunes cattails toss and bend as snappy
as the surf, rushing and crashing down the jetty.

His head a swivel of round glances,
his eyes a deeper yellow than the winter sun,
he wonders if the spot two hundred feet away
is a mouse on the crawl from mud hole
to deer-grass patch.

Read the poem in its entirety.


Visit the Audubon Society to learn more about the Christmas bird count.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Paul at These 4 Corners. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - 13 Ways of Looking at Winter

This weekend I was savoring Wallace Steven's wonderful poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. I began to think that looking at winter in this way might be an interesting thing to do. Now, you don't need to come up with 13 stanzas of your own. Perhaps we could write this as a modified renga, each contributing a verse or two.

Here is the stanza I'm starting with (I think).

I
Short days
long nights
the coldest of seasons
heralds the approaching light

However you want to approach it, the challenge this week is to write a few stanzas (or more!) about winter. I hope you'll join me. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Poetry Friday - Winter Nights

Mother nature hasn't decided what the weather will be, with 70 degree days followed by 40 degree days. I'm enjoying advent and the slow approach of winter. Here's an old poem (late 16th to early 17th century) for the season.

Winter Nights
by Thomas Campion

Now winter nights enlarge
      The number of their hours,
    And clouds their storms discharge
      Upon the airy towers.
    Let now the chimneys blaze        
      And cups o'erflow with wine;
    Let well-tuned words amaze
      With harmony divine.
    Now yellow waxen lights
      Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
      Sleep's leaden spells remove.

    This time doth well dispense
      With lovers' long discourse;
    Much speech hath some defence,
      Though beauty no remorse.
    All do not all things well;
      Some measures comely tread,
    Some knotted riddles tell,
      Some poems smoothly read.
    The summer hath his joys,
      And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
      They shorten tedious nights.


I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Anastasia Suen at Booktalking #kidlit. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Pleiades

Invented by Craig Tigerman, the editor for the online poetry journal SOL Magazine, the pleiades is a 7-line poem in which each line begins with same letter as the first letter in the one-word title. There are no rhyme or meter requirements for a pleiades, though some have suggested the lines be limited to six syllables.

You can read more about this form at Super Forty and The Poets Garret.

I hope you'll join me this week in writing a pleiades. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.