Tag Archives: writing challenge

30 in 30, day twenty

sept 2017 30-30Here is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek trace poem of D.H. Lawrence’s “Moon Memory.” (You can read the original here.)

Fog Forgetfulness

When the fog rises in a student’s mind
grey and clammy, as in the green shadow of a copse
pooling together, and sticking to his skull –

then the tranquil, ordered thought-world
exists no more, nor ever truly existed;
but instead
this thick grey dullness
oozes, and drips seeping, drifting sideways, muggily against his skull,
on his thoughts that are verdant forest within him.

And through the sticking of the grey sponge of the fog
furry creatures enveloped plunge inward and grow dim
in muddy gloom of torpor, leaf-enveloped torpor
in the sleepy, sludge-ridden blockage of ordered thought
that has left the woods in pea soup, even in daylight.

30 in 30, day nineteen

sept 2017 30-30I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. I’ve noticed that the reviews on the covers, written I suppose by other poets, are often quite poetic themselves.

Found in review

Like the life of the poet, the life of the world
is saturated with pain and ache
not yet finished, not yet answered, not yet resolved.

The poet sends her words into a different
kind of darkness with steady exactness,
their arc of perception over and over striking true.

The poet opens up thrilling new worlds
by fearlessly inhabiting
poems of sorrow, survival, and identity.

The poet creates a haunting, echoing
distance, a sound
from some unidentifiable place.

The poet brightens the shadowy
corners of her world
with verbal pyrotechnics.

All the pores of her poetry
are open, exuding
her entire flesh and spirit.

Over and over, at each wild
leap or transformation, flames
shoot up the reader’s spine.

Each poem is a riddle; the answers may sometimes
elude us, but we continue to read, hoping
that we may stumble upon answers.

30 in 30, day seventeen

sept 2017 30-30For today’s poem, I picked up the nearest book, turned to page 17, and wrote down the first word, every seventeenth word after that, and the last word. That gave me twenty-two words, which I divided into pairs, each of which provided the first and last word of a line. Poetry by number?

Seventeen

remark on the way we hold
the line, with only perhaps
a faint idea what happened before

but maps were never
for us: they weren’t
something we turned to

I have no answers—I
can only stand here,
doorway agape, while she

prays to every foreign god
I’m the one to make it so

30 in 30, day sixteen

sept 2017 30-30

Night and day

shrouded in birches, the house on the corner is
dark and foreboding
by day, overgrown and shadowed
with an air of neglect

but at night the windows glow
warm through the branches
casting welcome light
on the undersides of the leaves

30 in 30, day fifteen

sept 2017 30-30With this post, I’m halfway through this thirty day challenge. Today’s poem was inspired by a Whack-A-Mole comment at the end of an episode of Madame Secretary we watched this evening.

Hammer in hand

You don’t get to slay the dragon
every day. Sometimes you do well
to land a solid blow so evil
ducks and goes looking for somewhere
else to stick its head out.

30 in 30, day fourteen

sept 2017 30-30This is a derangement (an exercise from Wingbeats II) of a fragment from Edna St. Vincent Millay.

In memory

No more the broken bird beats
golden; the once-ivory box is
spoken: all your words are lovely.

Restore the secret of earth:
chemistry shall never talk
but of your music.

– from Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Memorial to D.C.: Elegy”

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/millay/april/sa-memorial.html

30 in 30, day thirteen

sept 2017 30-30Reading Mary Oliver again; even her prose is poetry.

Time means little in the world of poems

To be contemporary
is to rise through
the stack
of the past,
like the fire through
the mountain.

Only a heat
so deeply and intelligently
born can carry
a new idea into
the air.

– Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, p. 12

30 in 30, day twelve

sept 2017 30-30I find book titles such wonderful inspiration. This poem is made of words and phrases from the titles of a single author. (Bonus points if anyone correctly identifies who it is.)

In the lion valley

leave the crocodile of forgetfulness
on the sandbank of desire, the case
for love in the summer of a dragon moon

curse the borrower of night
in the street of four hundred pharaohs
silhouetted in scarlet and green velvet

the devil may care that the seventh sinner
is naked once more, but the Dead Sea is a cipher
and the last camel died at noon

30 in 30, day eleven

sept 2017 30-30My favorite report on this phenomenon was the Miami Herald article that compared it to Moses’ parting of the Sea of Reeds.

Double-stranded

a widdershins eye
the size of a continent
glares into space

drops boats and sea
creatures to exposed
ocean bottom

before flushing them
clean onto land

30 in 30, day ten

sept 2017 30-30This poem was inspired by the friends and family I know who keep this intricate handcraft alive.

Tatted

made of lace, this heart is delicate
but not fragile: strong knots and stout string
bind it to itself, to generations
of hands with shuttles and dreams
drawn in tight loops against
hardship and despair