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

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

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!  

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

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

You can read my Poetry Sisters' pieces 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 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!  

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

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

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’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!  

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

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

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!  

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.

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

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

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 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! 

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

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

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!