Here’s something inspired by today’s Picture Prompts, which I follow on Twitter (@pictureprompts).
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Deep aqua
The sun on the cliff is blinding
white, almost as bright as the sea
of sand that stretches to the hazy
horizon. The rusted steel
hull of a ship rests on its keel, offers
the only shade at noon. Did it reach
this land-locked harbor by sailing
over the oean-blue sky?
Posted in Poetry
Tagged @pictureprompts, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, Picture Prompts, poetry practice, Twitter
Here’s another exercise from Wingbeats II. It’s called a pojack, and it involves hijacking another poem. The victim of my effort is Emily Dickinson’s “A Man may make a Remark” (no. 952).
Click here to view the original poem.
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
A wonder
A bear may make a waffle
in itself a marvelous thing
that may prove the source of enchantment
in hidden nature seen
Let us cook with skill
let us explore with love
mystery exists in the woods
before it exists on the stove
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Emily Dickinson, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, pojack, Wingbeats II
And here at last is today’s poem: another derangement of William Carlos Williams’ long-suffering “The Pink Locust.”
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Blush
trees grow; fools question, pry into affairs until one
remains resilient
come now – neglect to attack and find you were made
to admire the minutiae on the ground
the world flowers, gratified to help the public
resemble a garden rid of thieves
say your tears and stand with others who flatter
the sweet-pea in question
hide the rootlet until they admit thinking the locust
generous, persistent, and modest
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, William Carlos Williams
Here’s the last of my catching up, inspired by a conversation I had with someone over the weekend.
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Necessity is the mother
She sewed a lace doily
to the back of her jeans
jacket because her momma told her
she couldn’t afford to buy
the one she saw in the store
window. It was shaped like a spider
web, and for thirty years she has looked
for a patch shaped like a spider
for the center of the web.
Still playing catch-up from my weekend travels. I suppose you might call this a kind of found poem, another exercise from The Daily Poet. I’m going to take my mother to get her hair done more often.
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Overheard at the hair salon
The pain is a ten, but every time
I feel it I say, There’s that blue
five again. Sometimes it shoots
down my arm like a river
branching into my hand.
And my shoulder grates
like gravel. I can picture a plate
with holes in it, grinding
and catching as it moves.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged found poetry, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, The Daily Poet
I was away at a family wedding over the weekend and both my time and online access were limited. I managed to compose and post something each day on the Lexington Poetry Month blog, but other than that was off the grid.
This was another exercise from The Daily Poet.
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Money changes everything
The local natives gave Peter Minuit the island
of Manhattan in exchange
for some hatchets, cloth, and beads with the approximate
value of one and a half pounds of silver.
In 1690, the first paper money
in the history of Western civilization
was issued by the Massachusetts Bay Company.
President Andrew Jackson purchased
the Louisiana Territory (828,000 square miles)
for three cents an acre.
The material value of a 1982 penny is two
and a half times it’s face value.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, The Daily Poet
Another exercise from The Daily Poet.
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Found poetry: Twitter
In his dictionary, Dr. Johnson defined a stoat as “a small stinking animal.”
Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts would hit rural patients hard
All the characters are on trial in any civilized narrative. — William Empson
Poetry can do many things. But what I value is a poem’s ability to make me simply reconsider: a single word, an image I see daily, a thought
Posted in Poetry
Tagged found poetry, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, The Daily Poet, Twitter
Today’s poem is from an exercise in The Daily Poet.
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Dali poem no. 1
two pieces of bread
expressing the sentiment of love:
a couple with their heads full of clouds
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, Salvador Dali, The Daily Poet
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is on my daughter’s summer reading list for school. This afternoon she read aloud a passage she found especially beautiful, so I decided to see what I could do with it.
(from p. 12 of the reprinted 1899 edition, Black and White Classics, 2014)
Reblogged (with corrected typo) from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Many souls perish in its tumult
embrace close its soft, enfolding body
the sensuous sea of touch
the soul speaks the sea of voice
contemplation itself loses inward mazes
solitude of abysses, a spell for wonder
to the soul, inviting, murmuring, clamoring, whispering,
ceasing:
never seductive, the sea of the voice
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Kate Chopin, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice
I’m still tinkering around with William Carlos Williams’ “The Pink Locust,” finding new ways to take it apart and make something different out of the pieces. Fair warning: there will probably be more derangement poetry in the weeks to come because I’m having too much fun with this exercise.
Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.
Naked
they could but hide anything
among pride public thief
a resembling flower: modest, laughable
is it so myself to think too flattering
will remain rootless, hair-thin
if ground from the tear
will you garden the admitted one
locust-pink, as persistent as I am?
Posted in Poetry
Tagged derangement, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, William Carlos Williams
The Daily Compost 