Tag Archives: poetry practice

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-five poem: LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

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.

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Tagged Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, poetry practice

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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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 eighteen poem, LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 18, 2017 | 2 comments

I found a copy of Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook at the used book store last week. I picked it up this morning and these sentences jumped off the page.
(Found poetry from p. 9)

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

Beyond the margins of the self

Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem
after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river
waves. None is timeless; each arrives
in an historical context; almost
everything, in the end, passes. But the desire
to make a poem, and the world’s willingness to receive
it—indeed, the world’s need of it—
these never pass.

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Tagged found poetry, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, Mary Oliver, poetry practice

Day seventeen poem, LexPoMo 2017

Posted on June 17, 2017 | Leave a comment

I love the library, for more reasons than I can possibly express. While working there today I made a list of intriguing titles as I wandered the stacks. Each line of this poem, including the title, is from that list.

Reblogged from the Lexington Poetry Month blog.

History of the rain

what the waves know
the yellow eyes of crocodiles
exposed
the time between
love and ordinary creatures

hard to handle
the night falling
untethered
into the beautiful north

they may not mean to, but they do
listen to me
a city breathing

secret of a thousand beauties
chasing fire

reckless disregard

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Posted in Poetry

Tagged Eastside Branch, found poetry, Lexington Poetry Month, Lexington Public Library, LexPoMo, poetry practice