The Miss Rumphius Effect: 2023

Friday, December 29, 2023

Poetry Sisters Write Elfchen

The challenge this month was to write an elfchen. An elfchen is described as a "German cinquain" poem. Instead of using syllables, this poem has 11 words, the lines having 1-2-3-4-1 words, respectively. Wikipedia calls this an elevenie (German Elfchen – Elf "eleven" and -chen as diminutive suffix to indicate diminutive size and endearment).

I'll admit that I wasn't particularly thrilled with this challenge. Don't get me wrong, I think Adelaide Crapsey's cinquain poems are genius. I love her work so much that I even visited her grave when I stopped to visit the graves of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, NY (my hometown).

In its simplest form, Crapsey's ciquain follows a syllabic pattern of 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 2.

However, the cinquain has long been used by (some) classroom teachers to "teach poetry" and in this form, it is most didactic and unpoetic. Yes, I said it. The Wikipedia entry on the elevenie reads like all those cinquain handouts I so loathe. This is the structure they recommend for this form.

Row	Words	Content
1	1	A thought, an object, a colour, a smell or the like
2	2	What does the word from the first row do?
3	3	Where or how is the word of row 1?
4	4	What do you mean?
5	1	Conclusion: What results from all this? What is the outcome?

Here is the way the cinquain is taught in schools. The purpose is generally "to help learners stretch and develop their creative writing skills in a structured formula while reviewing parts of speech." Instead of syllables, it uses word count, so it looks just like the elevenie.

Image from Free Cinquain Poem.

Here is a cinquain of Crapsey's. Note that it follows none of the conventions described above.

Niagara

Seen on a Night in November

How frail

Above the bulk

Of crashing water hangs,

Autumnal, evanescent, wan,

The moon.

I really don't understand how this beautiful poetic form morphed into a tool for teaching parts of speech. Suffice it to say that in calling this poem a "German cinquain," I was not very excited and a bit nervous about this challenge. At first, I tried to tell a story with my poems, but that approach generally didn't work for me. I also played around with adding German words. I wrote a lot of crap, but I also wrote a few poems I'm relatively pleased with. I'm sharing three poems, and because I like to break the rules, one of them is a reverse elfchen (1-4-3-2-1). The first poem is about my dad.

Gesundheit!
Our answer
to his loud
full-bodied and thunderous
sneezes

Peace?
Not yet.
Some say never.
Pray. Don't lose faith.
Hope.

Truths—
Climate change is real.
Life is short.
I love
you.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.

Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Michelle Kogan. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Friday, November 24, 2023

Poetry Sisters Write "In the Style Of" Valerie Worth

The challenge this month was to write "in the style of" Valerie Worth. You can learn more about Valerie Worth and read some of her poems at Spotlight on NCTE Poets: Valerie Worth, with Lee Bennett Hopkins, a post by Renée M. LaTulippe at No Water River.

Worth's poems are meditations on the little things in world around us. Writing in free verse, her keen sense of observation and economy of language make everyday objects seem extraordinary.

When William was in third grade (2009-2010) his teacher had the class copy and illustrate poems that "spoke" to them in their journals. This poem by Valerie Worth was one of his choices.

In Paul Janeczko's book The Place My Words Are Looking For: What Poets Say About
and Through Their Work, Worth had this to say about poetry.

"One of poetry’s most wonderful features is that it can get beneath the surface of things and explore them not as mere objects but as remarkable phenomena with lively personalities of their own. Articles as coat hangers can take on unexpected dimensions within the realm of a poem; and if this can happen with coat hangers, then the world must be filled with other ‘ordinary’ subjects just waiting for poetry to come along and reveal their extraordinary selves."

Worth's poems are magical, so emulating her was quite a challenge. I used the poem porches as my mentor text.

attic

in the attic
time is fluid

the air thick
with memory

trinkets and photos
recall a lifetime

a rocking horse sways
and gathers dust

an old teddy bear
welcomes a new friend

holiday boxes wait
expectant and hopeful

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.

Would you like to try the next challenge? In December we’re writing in the form of the elfchen, or German cinquain. You can learn about this form at German With Nicole. Are you in? Good! We are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on December 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!

Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Wednesday, November 01, 2023

A Cento Challenge

This month Every Day Poems offered up a challenge to "craft a Cento from some of your favorite Every Day Poems lines." They also added this extension.

For some extra fun, you’re invited to hand-letter your Cento poem, using a different style or color for each unique line you’ve gathered from another poet. Or, you could put each line on a different slip of paper and collage your poem together.

Challenge accepted!

Here is my untitled cento. (Click to enlarge.)

It reads:

the whole world’s chanting desire

between stars or heartbeats

beyond reach, beyond reckoning

and in slow-motion

a tide, incoming: vast

when pulled away, return always to me

The lines in this cento come from the following poems:

Black Dirt by Helen Pruitt Wallace
Report [an excerpt] by Elizabeth C. Herron
Grendel In Dawn’s Early Light by Rick Maxson
Into the Woods by Laurie Klein
Into the Woods by Laurie Klein
Juliet’s Aubade by Sara Barkat

Friday, October 27, 2023

Poetry Sisters Write Bouts-rimés

The challenge this month was to write in the form of bouts-rimés. In The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, Ron Padgett describes the form this way:

A bouts-rimés poem is created by one person’s making up a list of rhymed words and giving it to another person, who in turn writes the lines that end with those rhymes, in the same order in which they were given.

This post by Lady in Read Writes has an infographic on the history of the form. What must be mentioned is that the tradition is to write 14 rhymed lines in the form of a sonnet.

We didn't follow the rules for rhymed word generation exactly, but we came up with a creative variation. As we began to plan for our Sunday Zoom, we started putting pairs of rhymed words in the Slack channel for our October challenge. Mary Lee was gracious enough to create a Google doc that included an outline of different sonnet forms, along with our rhyming words. The word pairs were listed in the order they were submitted and labeled A-G. That means we had 28 words for 14 end rhymes. This meant that the sonnet form you chose largely dictated which worlds you were required to use. For example, Petrachan and Spenserian sonnets would use words only from lists A through E, while Shakespearean would use words from each list.

I decided to try something different, so I went with the terza rima sonnet. This sonnet is named for the terza rima, which is a three-line stanza that uses a chain rhyme. The rhyme scheme of the terza rima sonnet is ABA BCB CDC DED with a final rhyming couplet that usually echoes the first rhyme: AA. The poem Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost is an example of this form.

Here are the words we suggested. The words I chose to use are in green.

A: profuse/abtruse
chartreuse/truce

B: incline/shine
resign/supine

C: various/gregarious
hilarious/precarious

D: ceasefire/quagmire
higher/dryer

E: transform/barnstorm
uniform/conform

F: humility/futility
nobility, tranquility

G: perturb/superb
reverb, disturb

I listed the end words first and then began to write. I did rearrange a few of the lines once I had a sense of where this might be going. I tried so hard to follow the rules, but I really wanted to replace the word hilarious with ridiculous because it makes more sense in the poem. Doing so would mean I'd FAILED to bend this form to my will and make my lines fit the prescribed end words, so I've left a less desirable option to stay within the bounds of the challenge. The misuse of hilarious notwithstanding, I'm pleased with the result.

The World Abstruse

The world amazes even though abstruse
Give up on understanding just resign
yourself to sing its praises most profuse

Blue sky and clouds you ponder while supine
as morning flocks sing most gregarious
You rise to wander up the steep incline

step lightly to the edge precarious
Views sublime soon call you to move higher
what vexed you once now seems hilarious

compared to all those praying for ceasefire
What will it take to make hard hearts transform?
To pull societies from the quagmire?

You hope beyond all hope for peace—a truce
This world you love amazes while abstruse

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month, we’re writing in the style of Valerie Worth. You can learn more about Valerie Worth and read some of her poems at Spotlight on NCTE Poets: Valerie Worth, with Lee Bennett Hopkins, a post by Renée M. LaTulippe at No Water River. Are you in? Good! We are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on November 24th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!

Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Carol Labuzzetta at The Apples in My Orchard. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Friday, September 29, 2023

Poetry Sisters Write Diminishing Verse

The challenge this month was to write in the form of diminishing verse. You can learn more about this form at Writer's Digest. You can also find helpful information at Astra Poetica, Word Wool, and YeahWrite. Wikipedia calls these Pruning Poems. Basically, the last word in each line is reduced in diminishing (pruning) fashion, by removing the initial letter of the last word in the line without any other changes to spelling. One example might be trout/rout/out.

I'm grateful I didn't need to think about addressing the theme of transformation in my writing, because the form is transformational in itself. I really had no idea how to start this challenge, so I googled "3-letter words that start with a." I looked at that list and started adding letters to try and make longer words that shared letters. I did this for all 5 vowels (sorry y). When I found that difficult, I went to thefreedictionary.com and entered 3-letter words, like art, and selected "ends with." This got me a very long list of words. From playing around with this I generated a page of word lists.

The problem with this approach was that it generated words that didn't seem to fit very well together. I also took some liberty with 3-letter words, including ack and ick. While all these sets of words rhymed, I had no idea how to make sense of them. When I began working on a poem in earnest, I tried to find a story to tell. Given that I find this form annoying and contrived, I'm pretty pleased with this little poem.

Ode to the Carolina Wren

Faithful companions a mated pair cleaves
raises brood after brood that fledges and leaves
here in the rundown farmhouse eaves

Daily I hear the male whistle and scold
his tweedle-tweedle-tweedle rings out in the cold
the song of the wren never gets old

Since I've been playing around with Canva, here's the photographic version of this poem.

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.

Tanita Davis
Mary Lee Hahn
Sara Lewis Holmes
Kelly Ramsdell
Laura Purdie Salas
Liz Garton Scanlon

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month, we’re writing in the form of bouts-rimé (pronounced Boo-ReeMay). Bouts-rimés "is a method of poetry composition where the author writes down the rhyming end words of each line first, and then fills in the rest of the poem. It is sometimes approached as a game, with one participant challenged to create coherent verse from absurdly incongruent end-words." You can learn more about this form at Bouts-Rimé: A Rhyming Word Game Popular During the Georgian Era. Are you in? Good! We are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on October 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!

Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Friday, August 25, 2023

Poetry Sisters Play with an Exquisite Corpse

This month's challenge was writing a poem from the lines generated as we played with an exquisite corpse. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about this form.

Exquisite corpse (from the original French term cadavre exquis, literally exquisite cadaver), is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g., "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun." as in "The green duck sweetly sang the dreadful dirge.") or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed.

In terms of process, Tanita started us off by writing one line of poetry and selecting a clunker from Linda Mitchell's collection. She DM'd her lines to Sara and we were off, each poet sending an original line and a clunker to someone else in the group. When Kelly wrote her lines, she sent them to Tanita, who wrote one more to finish this thing. We only shared our lines with one other person, so it wasn't until we met Sunday on Zoom that we shared the original lines we wrote and the clunkers we selected. Surprisingly, the lines hung together well. Here's the poem our blind exchange generated. The clunker lines appear in red.

They say the mind is garden-like, with thoughts as sprouting seeds (Tanita)
but I'm left holding cuttings I'm not sure where to plant
Weedy-thick, the prickly buds of odd logic bloom: (Sara)
You don't cry anymore, but you sing all the words.
Each line in a different language as the light shifts, (Liz)
trees turned so orange the road looked blue.
Words tangle, colors muddy in the palette. (Mary Lee)
I am no longer winsome to the sun.
a whole sun’s rise to share
there goes the one that got away (Tricia)
found a bit of sunflower
and plucked every petal (by the way, he loves me) (Laura)
and then I remembered (Kelly)
that’s what you wrote about the green beans
Stockpile, then, that snap and sass to sweeten your September. (Tanita)

I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to approach this challenge, so while we were each wrestling with the lines we generated, I decided to try crafting a poem from only the words and phrases listed in the poem. I normally write all my poems by hand, but this time around, I pasted the poem in one column and wrote in the adjacent column. As I selected words or phrases, I highlighted them to mark which I'd used. If I repeated a word, I made it bold. I gave myself the freedom to change word endings and tenses and even cut words into parts. This gave me even more words to choose from. In the end, I did add the words she and her to the poem, but otherwise stuck to the constraint I gave myself. Here's what the Word doc looked like when I finished.

And here is the poem that emerged from our collective lines.

The One That Got Away

She was snap and sass
not prickly bud, but sprouting seed
winsome as sweet September
she loved sunflowers
stockpiled green beans
sang to the sun
her thoughts bloomed in different languages
words all weedy and tangled

I remember each word she said
in the blue of the sun’s rise
the way she held that flower
plucked every petal
she looked to the road
orange and thick with trees
then turned and left

holding cuttings found
about her garden
I’m not sure where to plant them
I don’t cry anymore
but I am no longer whole

You can read my Poetry Sisters' pieces at the links below.

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month, we’re writing in the form of diminishing verse. You can learn more about this form at Writer's Digest. You can also find helpful information at Astra Poetica, Word Wool, and YeahWrite. Wikipedia calls these Pruning Poems. Are you in? Good! The Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on September 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.We look forward to reading your poems!

Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Linda Baie at Teacher Dance. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Friday, July 28, 2023

Poetry Sisters Write Monotetra Poems

The challenge this month was to write a poem in the form of monotetra. You can learn more about it at Writer's Digest. I believe I suggested this one when we were mapping out the year. It looked interesting and I'm always a sucker for form. This form includes any number of quatrains written in tetrameter (8 syllables in each line), with each quatrain using a single rhyme (mono-rhymed). The last line in each stanza repeats the same four syllables.

This was a lot harder than I imagined. I found the single rhyme hard to work with. I much prefer AB rhyme patterns. I wrote two really bad poems before I remembered our theme of transformation, so I started again. I'll admit to cheating a bit, as this poem has 3 lines with 9 syllables. I tried but couldn't find synonyms with the "right" number of syllables to make the lines 8 syllables. Oh well. I do have a poem to share, even though it feels unfinished. I think it needs one more stanza, perhaps something more hopeful. This is definitely a draft I will revisit.

Cast of Uintatherium anceps skull, French National Museum of Natural History, Paris

Photo by Jebulon, Public Domain

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11978564

Monotetra for a World Changed

The summit view is worth the climb

back to nature our paradigm

enter a world still and sublime

Step back in time, step back in time

Picture this place in the Eocene

modern mammals arrive on the scene

now most are gone, what does this mean?

Sight now unseen, sight now unseen

Rivers polluted, trees cut away

towns have replaced the fields and the hay

oysters dying in Chesapeake Bay

We've lost our way, we've lost our way

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month, we’re creating an Exquisite Corpse poem. These collaborative poems necessarily involve yourself and at least one other poet, passing lines or stanzas forward, so now’s the time to choose poetry compatriots. Are you in? Good! The Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION – and we’re going to also sneak in a few of Linda Mitchell’s clunkers to give us more to play with. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on August 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.We look forward to reading your poems!

I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Jan at BookSeedStudio. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Friday, June 30, 2023

Poetry Sisters Write to a Quote

The challenge this month was to write a poem in response to a quote. Initially, I thought we would be writing to the same quote, but several examples were shared, so I decided to use one that spoke to me. Over the last few weeks, the calendar was looming large for me as the month of June and the second anniversary of my mother's death approached. That anniversary is today. Knowing that we would be sharing our poems at this time, and because she's been much on my mind, I decided I wanted to write a poem for or about her.

The second challenge was to include the theme of transformation, which informs all of our writing this year. I couldn't figure out how to do that, though death is a form of transformation, and surely my life has been transformed by this loss.

I decided I wanted to write to a form and chose the villanelle. I like the repeating lines and the need for only two rhymes. I wrote with this photo of my mother beside me. It was taken in May of 2021 when I visited with her for the last time.

A few weeks ago, I read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. It's an amazing novel with beautiful prose. I copied several quotes from it into my commonplace journal. One stuck with me and ultimately became the inspiration for my poem. It rings true because I am both missing and remembering my mother, today and every day.

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ.”
-Ocean Vuong in On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Villanelle for My Mother

Some days it’s hard to bear that you are dead

I talk to you each morning when I pray

And often hear your voice inside my head

“Put on something bright. Why not wear red?”

You were never at a loss for what to say

Some days it’s hard to bear that you are dead

I follow your advice and make my bed

“Straighten up your room before you play.”

I often hear your voice inside my head

Loose buttons? Reach for needle and some thread

Your smallest lessons stuck, won’t fade away

Some days it’s hard to bear that you are dead

On my last visit you forlornly said

“Our time has been so short, I wish you’d stay.”

I often hear your voice inside my head

It’s been two years since those first tears were shed

Yet still I carry grief each waking day

Most days it’s hard to bear that you are dead

Thank God I hear your voice inside my head

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.

Tanita Davis
Mary Lee Hahn
Sara Lewis Holmes
Kelly Ramsdell
Laura Purdie Salas
Liz Garton Scanlon
Andi Sibley

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month we are writing in the form of monotetra. You can learn more about it at Writer's Digest. We hope you'll join us. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on July 28th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!

I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Friday, June 02, 2023

Poetry Friday is Here!

Hello All! I'm so happy to be hosting Poetry Friday.

I have spent the last few months preparing to move out of the building I have spent the last 29 years in on campus. It is my home away from home. There is much I will miss about it. The physical move of all our things occurred this week and still continues, as bookshelves are installed, and furniture moved in. I have been adrift for weeks, with no place to land, settling most days in the library before my classes meet in the late afternoon. We will be allowed to move in next week, and I can't wait.

In seeing my new office, I am saddened that I have lost so much space to store my books. Out of necessity, I will need to let some go. While I will be able to pass them on to new teachers just starting out, it will hurt to part with them.

Thinking of moving had me reading Ralph Fletcher as I packed up. In Moving Day, Ralph gives readers a series of free verse poems in which 12-year-old Fletch describes his family's move from Massachusetts to Ohio. Here's one of my favorites from this collection.

Defrosting the Freezer

One container of spaghetti sauce
Grandma made before she died.

Two pieces of old wedding cake
you couldn't pay me to eat.

Three snowballs from last winter
slightly deformed, no longer fluffy.

Four small flounder from the time
Grandpa took me deep-sea fishing.

Everything coated with a thick
white layer of sadness.

That thick layer of sadness has surely enveloped me. I did stop by my old digs one last time to say goodbye. My son grew up here, and when he came to campus, lived in the building connected to mine for 2 of his 4 years. It holds many precious memories.

I'll be rounding up posts through the day old-school style, so please leave your link in the comments, and I will add you to the post. Happy Poetry Friday, all!

**********

Original Poetry

Laura Purdie Salas is sharing a poem entitled The Song of Sunshine.

Mary Lee Hahn of A(nother) year of Reading is sharing a sudoku poem entitled No Vacancy.

Heidi Mordhorst of my juicy little universe is celebrating pride and sharing a color poem entitled I Finally Choose a Favorite Color.

Linda Mitchell of A Word Edgewise is also sharing a color poem written to a lovely photo.

Robyn Hood Black shares a proud grandparent moment and the poem You're the ONE! on the occasion of her grandson's first birthday.

Linda Baie of Teacher Dance shares a poem entitled The Bouncing Ball Keeps Bouncing.

Irene Latham of Live Your Poem shares an ArtSpeak: LIGHT poem entitled Meadow Song. She also shares an invitation to a moon poem party when she hosts Poetry Friday on June 30th.

Margaret Simon of Reflections on the Teche is also sharing a color poem that begins, "If you want to find red."

Michelle Kogan shares some Good morning haiku.

Carol Varsalona of Beyond Literacy Link remembers her uncle and pays to tribute to loved ones with her poem Life is a Journey.

At Poetry Pizzazz with Alan J. Wright, Alan shares a poem entitled Appliance Compliance.

Carol Labuzzetta of The Apples in My Orchards shares a found object poem entitled Debris.

Anastasia Suen is sharing an acrostic poem for June.

Patricia J. Franz marvels at the mountains in springtime and shares the poem snow flower: a haiku.

Sally Murphy is generously giving us a glimpse into her new verse novel, Queen Narelle.

Matt Forrest Esenwine shares news of his forthcoming book and a poem entitled The Eve of Maturity.

Jone Rush MacCulloch combines the prompt for the monthly Spiritual Thursday Journey with her thoughts and poems in a slide show of visual prayers.

Donna Smith of Mainely Write shares her poem The Ocean as a Canva movie.

Molly Hogan of Nix the Comfort Zone used Eileen Spinelli’s “If You Want to Find Golden” as a mentor for her color poem.

Janice Scully of Salt City Verse shares two poems about Santa Cruz.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater of The Poem Farm shares a poem entitled Possibility, which can be sung to the tune of "Dona Nobis Pacem." She's also featuring some fourth-grade guest poets.

Marcie Flinchum Atkins shares a haiku and photo.

Book Reviews and Book Lists

Jama Rattigan of Jama's Alphabet Soup shares a review of Champion Chompers, Super Stinkers and Other Poems by Extraordinary Animals by Linda Ashman and Aparna Varma.

Susan Thomsen of Chicken Spaghetti shares a list of poetry books for adults published or forthcoming this year.

Mandy Robek of Enjoy and Embrace Learning shares the anthology Things We Feel by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.

On Writing

Lou Piccolo shares some thoughts about writing poetry to combat writer's block.

Poetry of Others

Ramona of Pleasures from the page rambles through the rhododendrons and shares lines from a Joy Harjo poem and Wendell Berry too.

Tabatha Yeatts of the Opposite of Indifference shares the poem "Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear" by Mosab Abu Toha.

Karen Edmisten shares the poem "New Moon Newton" by Oliver Baez Bendorf.

Friday, May 26, 2023

Poetry Sisters Write Ghazals

The challenge this month was to write in the form of the ghazal. You can learn more about this form here. This is a fairly restrictive form. When I began working on the first draft, I felt pretty good about where it was going, until I realized I was bending the rules far too much. Suffice it to say I scrapped my first draft and started on something entirely new. This one far better meets the rules for a ghazal, though I'm not sure it's very rhythmic. I can feel where the lines don't "sing" together. Maybe this is just a weird quirk of mine, or perhaps it comes from writing so often in iambic pentameter. In any case, this is a form I definitely need to play with.

Ghazal For the Dawn

birds in the garden sing in the dawn
all manner of creatures take wing in the dawn

mourners weep at a graveside
tears sting in the dawn

summer ends, school starts again
when the first bus arrives, children cling in the dawn

candles are lit, pews quietly fill
bells in the chapel ring in the dawn

hens wake up early, eat breakfast, lay eggs
rooster greeting the sunrise is king in the dawn

I lace up my sneakers, hit the road in the dark
feet pounding the pavement, arms swing in the dawn

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month we are writing in response to a quote. We hope you'll join us. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on June 30th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!

I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Patricia Franz at Reverie. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Friday, April 28, 2023

Poetry Sisters Write in the Style of Neruda

This month's challenge was to write in the style of Neruda. Oh boy. I haven't read much Neruda, so finding a poem as a mentor text was hard. I was familiar with the bilingual, illustrated selection of Neruda's Book of Questions that was published by Enchanted Lion Books last year. I thought about writing a poem composed of questions, but I went down the rabbit hole of reading Neruda's odes and got lost. They're pretty amazing. If you haven't read them, the best way to describe them is a lengthy (usually) stream of consciousness about everyday objects with a hefty dose of meandering seemingly off-topic before brilliantly closing with a meditation on beauty, nature, or something else profound.

Inspired by these odes, I attempted one of my own. Our theme for the year is transformation. I'm not sure I got there this time, but I had fun trying.

Ode to a Basket of Trinkets

Woven coils

of colorful paper

form a wide

round bowl

letters

clearly visible

one can

imagine

the stories

they told

In their

present form

transformed into

this bowl

they hold

memories

trinkets

baubles

no one

but me

can love

I cannot bear

to part

with small

forgotten

treasures

I worry them

in my hand

bringing the

ghosts of

love, loss

to life

memories clear

and cloudy

hanging by

a thread

I worry

over them

wonder when

they'll

disappear

each trinket

a touchstone

an exercise

in remembering

and forgetting

a pink diaper pin

once mine

mother kept

it in her

jewelry box

a fountain pen

ink cartridge

the bane of

my left-handed

existence

I'm not

cool enough

or adept enough

to write

without smudging

the ink

my hand

the paper

a Scrabble tile

one puzzle piece

Mardi Gras beads

tiny paper dolls

a frayed Girl Scout badge

three wheat pennies

a wooden nickel

all fleeting

beautiful

reminders of

the me I

used to be

and the ones

who made me

who

I am

You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below.

Tanita Davis
Mary Lee Hahn
Sara Lewis Holmes
Kelly Ramsdell
Laura Purdie Salas
Liz Garton Scanlon
Andi Sibley

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month we are writing in the form of the ghazal. You can learn more about this form here. We hope you'll join us. Are you in? Good! You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on May 26th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!

I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. Happy poetry Friday, friends!

Friday, April 14, 2023

NPM 2023 - Poem 14

My poem for Day 14 of National Poetry Month is written to the illustration Sowing and Reaping in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, (1863 May 23), p. 141. The poem focuses on the right side of the image.

The Richmond Bread Riot

April 1, 1863

In the third spring of the war

a nation of farmers

was starving

hungry women took the lead

took to the streets

wielding clubs and knives

axes and hatchets

they marched on

the Governor's mansion

discontent, angry

quiet determination turned

to chaos as chants of

"Bread or blood!"

echoed through the streets

I hope you'll join me tomorrow for my next poem highlighting a piece of history. You can read the previous poems as images on Instagram or at the links below. Each one is listed according to the primary source that inspired it.

April 1 - Sketch map of White Oak Swamp and vicinity southeast of Richmond.]; 6/1862; Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Record Group 77
April 2 - John Wilkes Booth's calling card
April 3 - Section of the city code of Montgomery, Alabama, requiring segregation on buses
April 4 - 1917 poster showing Liberty presenting a sword "Service" to a young woman
April 5 - Sheet music cover for Votes for Women: International Suffragists' Song
April 6 - Teachers' Monthly Report and Rules (1865): Narrative School Reports from Teachers and Superintendents of Freedmen's Schools
April 7 - Letter from Governor Ross Supporting Apache Removal (1886)
April 8 - Roy Takeno reading paper in front of office / photograph by Ansel Adams
April 9 - Amnesty Oath of Robert E. Lee (1865)
April 10 - Detroit Publishing Company photograph of The Main street, Mackinac
April 11 - Pigeon Message from Major Whittlesey to the Commanding Officer of the 308th Infantry (1918)
April 12 - Henry Bacon’s Competition Proposal for a Monument to Abraham Lincoln (1912)
April 13 - The Johnstown calamity. A slightly damaged house. Pennsylvania Johnstown, 1889

I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Jone Rush MacCulloch. Happy poetry Friday, friends!