Tag Archives: poetry practice

Days ten through fifteen: LexPoMo

LexPoMo2016aI was without internet access for several days, so these poems didn’t get posted to the Lexington Poetry Month blog. But in keeping with my promise to myself this month, I’m posting them here in a block.

Day ten prompt: blinking light

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Criminy! Turn off the blinkin’ light, will ya? Geez, it’s the middle
of the night, already. Some of us have to get up
in the morning.
Where were ya, anyway? Out with that
Maurice or one of his friends? Hey, I can ask,
can’t I? I gotta right.
What’s it to me? A fella gets woke up like this
gotta right to ask questions. If ya’ don’t like it, next time
don’t turn on the blinkin’ light.

Day eleven prompt: charging

Battery

He has a reputation for running up debts she cannot pay
Too easily he sees red and lunges headlong at anything that moves
Something restless in his blood calls out to her worst judgment
She feeds off the energy of his palpable buzz

Day twelve prompt: sheep

Sheep

All we need
is a little direction

All we want
is green pasture and still water

All we like
is to do what we please

All we have
is you

Day thirteen prompt: plan

[untitled]

I’m sitting out on the deck, trying to enjoy the lovely morning (bird song, light breeze, etc.). Someone is doing yard work on the next street, and they’ve been using something with an obnoxious gas motor for more than an hour. Except for when I’m mowing the lawn (which I’d frankly rather do with a non-motorized push mower, but that’s a topic for another day), one of the major benefits of yard work is the peacefulness of it. I don’t really see the point of spending so much outdoor time using a machine so noisy I have to wear headgear to protect my hearing. And the electric gadgets are bad enough; the gas-powered ones are a downright public nuisance.

Enough rant for now. I think I’ll go check my sprinkler out front.

Day fourteen prompt: beer goggles

Grasping at straws

It goggles the rind – that thick protective
layer of flesh (to cushion against impact)
encased in a slightly tougher skin (to control
moisture loss) – how such bizarre writing
prompts come about. I think perhaps
beer (or the consumption in great quantities
thereof) is somehow involved.

Day fifteen prompt: utilities

Pithy musing

utility is but
one
tiny
letter
from futility

 

NaPoWriMo, Day 7

The Lovers card from Jennifer Galasso’s Crystal Visions Tarot was the prompt for today’s poem. (Click here to see the card.) This is not a deck I own, and the image struck me as trite when it popped up in the app I was using. I dashed off a flip little ditty and decided I just wouldn’t post today. But my experience working with tarot wouldn’t let me leave it at that: I’ve seen depth and complexity in other renderings of this card – what was I missing here? My squirrel brain kept gnawing at it until I came up with something presentable. I’m glad it did, independent of the result, because it made me put in a good day’s work writing.

Chosen

Let us close our eyes to the trappings of love, lest we be deceived
by the cloying scent of roses, the glorious ray of light that cleaves
the clouds. Doves’ wings whistle like arrows in flight, and roses
bristle with thorns. Dark clouds crowd the sky; can the tang
of ozone, the rumble of thunder be far behind?

Let us close our mouths to the rituals of love, speak no words
for the wind to carry off as they are heard. The link we forge of our will
and choosing must hold us longer than the silken cords of ceremony,
bind us more firmly than any oath we can swear.

NaPoWriMo 2016

glopo2016button1

Welcome, global readers and poets!

NaPoWriMo, Day 3

NaPoWriMo 2016glopo2016button1I popped over to the NaPoWriMo site and found 1) they have made their official logo available for participants to use on their own blogs; and 2) someone came up with the brilliant idea of calling it Global Poetry Writing Month (GloPoWriMo), as people from all over the world are taking part, thanks to the marvels of the internet. I’m going to stick with my own cheesy NaPoWriMo banner because I think the tackiness suits me, but I’ll also display the official GloPoWriMo to welcome and celebrate all the international folks who stop by.

Today’s poetry prompt was the King of Pentacles from Juliet Sharman-Burke’s Beginner’s Guide to Tarot. I couldn’t find an image on the web, so I’ll be interested to know how the poem stands on its own. (Corn is used in the British sense that refers to cereal grain rather than the American sense that refers to maize.)

Harvest time

in my garden, I am king
the fruit-laden vines bow to me
the yellowing leaves dance before me
the corn bends its heavy head to me

in my garden, I am king
the rocks my throne
the five senses my body servants
and the rolling world my carriage

 

NaPoWriMo, Day 1

Today marks the beginning of National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo for short. We know this to be An Actual Thing because there is an official web site: www.NaPoWriMo.net. Check it out, because the site has links to all sorts of challenges, prompts, exercises, you name it.

What am I doing for NaPoWriMo this year? I’m glad you asked! I will be presenting a workshop next month on using tarot (and similar pictorial resources) as a tool for writing, so I have decided that my daily prompt will be a card drawn from my collection of physical and virtual decks.

Although I have committed to writing a poem every day, I will not necessarily post every day. Experience has taught me that my work is not always ready for a wider audience at first blush, and that my greatest contribution to literature may well be to refrain from publishing something. But not to worry; my expectations are low enough to allow a good deal of material through, and I plan to have fun this month, at my own expense if necessary.

As proof of that, I now unveil my very own homemade logo:

NaPoWriMo 2016

(Feel free to copy it and use it in any way that suits you.)

Happy poetry writing!

Poetry exercise: Tracing

The assignment last week in poetry class was to trace a poem someone else had written: swap the author’s words with my own, adhering as closely as possible to the original elements (parts of speech and inflection, sentence/line/stanza structure, punctuation, etc.) I immediately dubbed this exercise MadLib poetry, and I had enormous fun with it. I slavishly traced Elizabeth Bishop’s “Little Exercise” (click here for her poem) with the following result.

Trace imagery

Think of the dog pacing the yard methodically
like a home inspector checking for radon,
feel it calculating.

Think how they must sound now, the piano keys
waiting there untouched by fingers
in the sun-soaked parlor,

where every Sunday a woman brings fresh flowers,
arranges them, clucks under her breath
when the petals drop.

Think of the hallway and the cabbage roses
arrayed on the wallpaper, slowly fading
into the neutral background.

It is empty there. The hallway
and its long Oriental rug with the fringe on each end
are waiting to be walked, the doors to be opened.

Now the dog comes in after a final sweep
of the irregular, fenced perimeter,
each section marked with urine.

Think of nobody coming to the house
abandoned at the end of the sidewalk or the lane;
think of no one as invited, widely welcomed.

 

Prompted poetry: an old photograph

I drafted a couple of poems in response to an actual old photograph on the shelf, but then this popped to mind while I was killing time in a coffee shop. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be too literal.

Lost and found

He doesn’t recall her
face, even in dreams. Their son brings him
old photographs, but he recognizes
no one, himself least of all.

What he remembers is burying
his face in her hair, the scent
and fall of it, the way his fingers
tangled in the curls.

Prompted poetry: Dear Diary

I tinkered off and on with this prompt through the better part of a day until I thought to follow my own advice. I drew a couple of cards from two of my favorite decks, and the images immediately gave me an idea.

Dear Diary,

Last night I dreamed again I stood among tall firs, perfectly shaped, their branches weighted with snow. The trees covered a steep mountain slope, and through them I glimpsed other slopes and valleys, all blanketed with evergreen and white. My breath hung crisp in the air.

Beneath the heavy thatch of snow, needles living and dead absorbed all sound. I was enchanted; it was so beautiful and still. But a chill began to seep through my clothes, my skin: the silence was too complete. I was utterly alone in an indifferent wilderness.

My pulse throbbed in my ears, and then I noticed another noise, dim and muffled. It was the softest sobbing I have ever known, a weeping beyond all hope of being heard. I woke to find it was me.

Wizards 9 swords

(from Wizard’s Tarot, by Corrine Kenner, illustrated by John J. Blumen; Llewellyn 2011)

Trees 10 pentacles

(from The Tarot of Trees, by Dana Driscoll, 2009)

Prompted poetry: diatribe

February_Writing_Prompts

Observations from the field

buttons and banners, bumpers and yards that sprout
the uncanny side shoots of this strange season

rallies, stumps, town meetings, carefully orchestrated
surprise appearances – the hooting and chest thumping

part of the mating ritual for that bizarre subspecies,
Homo sapiens diatribis, the American politician

Prompted poetry: who are you?

When I saw this prompt, I was reminded of a blog post I saw last week at Tarot by Tina. Each week, Tina, herself a writer, draws a card to interpret from a writer’s perspective.

queen2bof2bswords

The Queen of Swords

proclaims your creature
self to be mind as well as brain: remember
that squiggly organ is more than
the body’s maestro, and thought
greater than the sum of firing neurons

she decrees that your intellect serves
your whole person, a loyal retainer
vital as her own chief counselor
and as powerful, because you are
who you think you are

so who do you think you are?

Prompted poetry: the comment

I recently found a wonderful resource for writers in South African-based Writers Write. The site has all kinds of goodies and support for both business and creative writing, including prompts, quotes, book reviews, and courses. I signed up to receive prompts for each month via e-mail, and February’s list arrived yesterday.

February_Writing_Prompts

Unexpected

the offhand comment is not painful
because formulated
without thought or consideration

the offhand comment is painful
because of astonishing
insight and precision