Tag Archives: poetry exercises

Day twenty-seven poem: LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 27, 2017 | Leave a comment

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

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Tagged Emily Dickinson, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, pojack, Wingbeats II

Day twenty-six poem: LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

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

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Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, William Carlos Williams

Day twenty-four poem: LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 26, 2017 | 2 comments

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.

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Posted in Poetry

Tagged found poetry, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, The Daily Poet

Day twenty-three poem: LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

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.

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Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, The Daily Poet

Day twenty-two poem: LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 22, 2017 | Leave a comment

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

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Tagged found poetry, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, The Daily Poet, Twitter

Day twenty poem, LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 20, 2017 | Leave a comment

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

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Tagged Kate Chopin, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice

Day nineteen poem, LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 19, 2017 | Leave a comment

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?

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Tagged derangement, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, William Carlos Williams

Day fifteen poem: LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 15, 2017 | Leave a comment

Here’s another poem using the derangement exercise from Wingbeats II. The source poem is the latter portion of “The Pink Locust” by William Carlos Williams. Unfortunately, I could not find an online version of the poem to link to.

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Face up

Place me – my denial will rest
among those who but rose
a poet’s galaxy.

I know not if I am it. In what may be
persistence, I flower like so and reward
greater offers.

No life would be ridiculous: which poem
in slighting slights itself? The poet made well
if it equals the rose.

A rose is an answer as might be betrayed
in would-be poems not inclined
to do much.

What says the world facing what the poet in me
will become? Myself, I think what
could I wish I were.

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Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, William Carlos Williams, Wingbeats II

Day fourteen poem: LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

Today’s poem resulted from a poetry exercise in Wingbeats II (edited by Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen) using D.H. Lawrence’s poem “Twilight.” (View the original poem here – title discrepancy due to sources – The Complete Poems vs. New Poetry.)

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Twilight deranged

gone from day is sight
litter glimmers light

a veil of star, a single play
there forsaken have the children

lie like a waste has meant
day worldly that all by flittering

goes moth-blue moon and night
oozing stock scent

old mirth of children wanes
clamor and pallor in palimpsest

the west dips and swallows
out of earth comes darkness

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Tagged D.H. Lawrence, David Meischen, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, Scott Wiggerman, Wingbeats II

Day three poem, LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

I’ve been doing a lot of trace poetry lately; it frees me to focus more on words and less on form. This is traced from D.H. Lawrence’s “Aware.” You can view the original at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54058/54058-h/54058-h.htm#png.029.

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Alive

Steadily the day is falling through the mottled leaves,
casting shadows within shadows, layers of shade and light
merging green and exquisite; and I beyond numb
feel in the air around me a sweetness I did not expect
I needed, but here it is and its touch soothes my skin;
I welcome it through the grief, choosing still to breathe.

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Tagged D.H. Lawrence, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry exercises, poetry practice, trace poetry