Poetry Friday - Lures

Hello friends! I've been absent with the start of summer school and wrapping up the academic year here. It's good to be back. Be sure to visit on Monday when I'll be back with some new poetry stretches.

Today I'm sharing a poem that reminds me of summer growing up, home, and old friends.

Lures
by Adam Vines

For Scott Harris

Last summer’s fishing failures dangled from trees:
a Rapala and Jitterbug a stand
of privet paid for, half-ounce jigs with rubber skirts
and jelly worms with wide-gap hooks on ten-pound test
we tithed with overzealous casts at bass.
Then off we’d go (our stringers bare) to find
a yard to cut, a truck to wash, so we could fill
the tackle box we shared again. Today
is 12/12/12, the Mayan end, and I,
a country boy in Brooklyn for the week,
will hail a cab for the first time and think
of cows unnerved by fish we missed
and shouts of “shit” that followed, and dawns to dusks
and always back with you, my childhood friend.

Read the poem in its entirety.


I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Margaret at Reflections on the Teche. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Abandoned Barn

On a drive in a rural county this week I saw several abandoned buildings. Those sights got me thinking about this week's writing prompt. I don't often use photos for stretches, largely because Laura has been doing this for years so fabulously with her 15 Words or Less prompt.

However, I couldn't get those images out of my mind, so this week I offer a photo as a prompt. I won't hold you to a word count or form, so feel free to explore.

Abandoned Barn

Photo by Roger H. Goun, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License

If you are interested in photos to inspire your poetry, check out the book Picture Yourself Writing Poetry: Using Photos to Inspire Writing by Laura Purdie Salas.

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

Monday Poetry Stretch - Chueh-chu

Forgive me for being a bit late today. I normally write these posts on the weekend, but this one was filled with graduation activities. So, after a day of meetings, my 21st year at the university comes to a close and I finally have some time to call my own ... until summer school starts next week. Well, enough about me, let's get on with this week's stretch!

I am still reading and pondering the forms in Robin Skelton's The Shapes of Our Singing: A Comprehensive Guide to Verse Forms and Metres from Around the World. Here is the poem Skelton wrote for this form and his explanation of the Chueh-chu.

Full moon:
     a white light
 carves shade:
     the warm night,
dream tamed,
     fears the dawn's
hard noise,
     the sun's bright

trees green
     not pearled gray,
walls grey
     not bleached white,
mind trapped
     as time's dream
feels time
     and takes flight.

The name Chueh-chu means, literally, "sonnet cut short." ... It consists of eight lines with the rhyme scheme A A B A C A D A or the rhyme scheme A B C B D B E B. A further variation is A A B A A A C A.    

This example is in the Wu-yen-shih metre, which consists of five monosyllable lines with a caesura after the second syllable. Each syllable is a complete word. 

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

Poetry Friday - IF ...

Graduation weekend is upon us at the University of Richmond. I always find this a bittersweet time.  While I am happy to have successfully navigated another academic year, I am saddened to say goodbye to the many students I have forged bonds with in their time here. 

In the spirit of commencement, new beginnings, and endless possibilities, I am sharing this poem and dedicating to all the students graduating this weekend, especially those in my corner of the world.

If—

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

Read the poem in its entirety.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Michelle at Today's Little Ditty. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday Poetry Stretch - Burns Stanza

When I interviewed J. Patrick Lewis last month (read it here) he said in response to a question on forms he wanted to try, "I’m endlessly working my way through Robin Skelton’s indispensable The Shapes of Our Singing: A Comprehensive Guide to Verse Forms and Metres from Around the World. For any poet eager to experiment, there is a surprise on every page." That was endorsement enough for me, so I ran out and bought a copy. I am still reading my way through it, but I thought this was as good a time as any to try out something new.

Here's what Skelton says about the Burns Stanza.

The Burns Stanza is so called because Robert Burns made brilliant use of it and it was through his work that it became familiar. It is also called Standard Habbie, the Scots stanza and the six-line stave. Each stanza has six lines rhyming A A A B A B. The A lines are usually of eight or nine syllables and the B lines of four or five. 

To a Mouse by Robert Burns is a great example of this.

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

Poetry Seven Share Pantoums

During the month of April the Poetry Seven spent their time working on the pantoum. Here is a description of the form.

The pantoum is a poem made up of stanzas of four lines where lines 2 and 4 of each stanza are repeated as lines 1 and 3 of the next stanza. The final stanza of a pantoum has an interesting twist. Lines 2 and 4 are the same as the 3rd and 1st of the first stanza, thereby using every line in the poem twice. 

Keep in mind that this form of poetry is of an indefinite length. It could be 3 stanzas, 4 stanzas or 20! 

(Adapted from The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms.)

There was no theme this time around, just two words--certainty and flight.

My very first thought was the phrase "certainties of flight." This made me think of birds and later, baby birds. I ended up writing many, many versions of a wood duck poem. In the first draft I shared with my sisters, the 2nd line of the 2nd stanza was "in trees that stretch so tall." I disliked "so tall" and wanted something like towering trees, but couldn't find a way to say it. Then it hit me that I was describing one nest and needed only one tree. So, I changed it to "in a tree that stretches tall." I still wasn't happy with the description, but wanted to keep the end rhyme because I liked where it took the poem. In the most recent version I picked a specific tree and chose the word sky for my end rhyme. This one change, of course, meant changes elsewhere. Without further ado, here are both poems, the first shared draft and my most recent revision.

Untitled Pantoum Draft V.1

Do wood duck ducklings dream of flight

when huddled in the nest together?

Picture the world from a dizzying height

while from the ground untethered?

Huddled in the nest together

in a tree that stretches tall

from the ground untethered

soon they’ll leap and fall

In a tree that stretches tall

high above the forest floor

brave young ducklings leap and fall

uncertain drop before they soar

High above the forest floor

looking down from a dizzying height

uncertain drop before they soar

wood duck ducklings dream of flight

Untitled Pantoum (Semi-Final Draft)

Do wood duck ducklings dream of flight

while huddled sleeping in their nest

the world below a glorious sight

the urge to jump for now suppressed

Huddled sleeping in their nest

red oak stretching toward the sky

the urge to jump can’t be suppressed

soon they’ll fall before they fly

Red oak stretching toward the sky

high above the forest floor

ducklings fall before they fly

uncertain drop before they soar

High above the forest floor

the world below a glorious sight

uncertain drop before they soar

wood duck ducklings dream of flight

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2015. All rights reserved.

My writing of the above poem was inspired by something I saw several years ago while watching the BBC series Planet Earth. Of course, these are Mandarin ducks, but wood ducks have the exact same experience, and this jumping/falling from a great height stuck with me.

While working on the wood duck poem, the phrase "flight risk" kept popping into my head. When it took root and wouldn't leave, I started thinking about escaping small town life and began working on a second piece. Here is an early draft of this poem, also still a work in progress.

Flight Risk

She was a flight risk from the start
with dreams too big to be restrained
small town girl, big city heart
she sought an honest life unchained

With dreams too big to be restrained
by certainties of rural life
she sought an honest life unchained
wouldn’t be some farmer’s wife

Forget the certainties of life
she was reaching for the moon
refused to be some farmer’s wife
and disappeared one afternoon

She was reaching for the moon
small town girl, big city heart
she disappeared one afternoon
fled to chase a brand new start

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2015. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems written by my Poetry Seven compatriots at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis - (as)certain flight
• Kelly Fineman - Twenty-two A Day and Untitled Pantoum
• Sara Lewis Holmes - I would let in the moon
• Laura Purdie Salas - Time for Flight
• Liz Garton Scanlon - So Much of Who You Are
• Andi Sibley - The Flight of Sons

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Ellen at Elementary Dear Reader. Happy poetry Friday friends!