A new day, a new discovery—this seems to be the way that April goes for me.
The daily prompt for today was to write a poem of negation – yes (or maybe, no), the challenge was to write a poem that involves describing something in terms of what it is not, or not like. For example, if I chose a whale as the topic of your poem, I might have lines like “It does not settle down in trees at night, cooing/Nor will it fit in your hand.”
Well, I started the process describing climbing since Ev has recently taken to the sport of rock climbing. It started well and I wrote three nice quatrains that were ok but sort of sing songs and bland. The fourth quatrain turned the whole poem around and began a totally new stream of thought.
So, I abandoned the prompt (once again) and the poem took on a life of its own.
Mountain Climb
I have built a house on the middle of a mountain; it is here I discover my desire for dance.
I love the rhythm of jumping boulder to boulder; I become my own secret Argentine tango— forward, back, cross-step, turn.
Here I learn forward ascent is felt in the heart, not the feet; and here that I realize the summit was never the goal.
The thick branches, sap running dry, the unexpected violence of shifting stone— the flesh of the mountain as it mistakes me for an intruder
reminds me of the drapes of darkness. But the glow of Venus before dawn grants me a time to wonder, what is the light for if not to illuminate?
I have built a house in which I fear nothing and no one. It is here where before I begin to die, I learn to live.
The daily prompt today was to write a parody or satire based on a famous poem. I chose a small selection from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
fall from grace
all due respect to the poet, september is the cruelest month, our children and our harvest whisking away; silence and dying leaves, singing melancholy in their place. my sorrow complete by empty playgrounds reminiscent of joy, but stark and barren like my arms.
so i rode my bike to town, to the library, to the gym, and took myself out to breakfast. i listened as george from the diner sing the blues about the breakfast club dwindling down to a few elderly patrons chewing— a symphony of gums smacking against dentures.
i looked into the dismal gray sky, taunting clouds covering seductive sunshine; too much history here to overlook. my bags are packed, reservations are made, it’s time to head south for the winter.
Today’s prompt didn’t spark joy, so I simply wrote. All day long the phrase “I sat for years like an elephant in the garden…” stayed with me as I pondered where the words might take a poem.
Well, read on, my friend, and you will see… the journey is always worth it, even when it is hard and long.
Garden View
I sat for years like an elephant in the garden waiting to become a feather.
White quilts warmed on winter afternoons; windows opened in the spring—
the subtle scent of daisies wafting on the breeze. I grew slowly into my skin—
five decades of painstaking transformation; my narrative unfurling slowly
as a fern frond in the first light of dawn— a singular dance of joy.
The prompt for today was from the archives of NaPoWriMo. They challenged me to write a poem that addresses itself or some aspect of its self (i.e., “Dear Poem,” or “what are my quatrains up to?”; “Couplet, come with me . . .”)
I have to agree with the prompt in this regard: It did seem a little “meta” at first, and even kind of cheesy. But it also helped me interrogate my own writing process.
I’d love to hear your poem. Why don’t you give writing poetry a try. This is the month to do it.
Dear Words,
You fail me.
I come expecting, anticipating holding my baited breath for that shiver of… shiver of…. what?
shiver of chagrin? shiver of shimmering shells? I…
Oh, forget it.
I feel forlorn and frustrated and fragile, so very fragile. Like fine china fit for fancy not function.
I need to fucking function.
Instead, I sit here in silence a simmering-shimmering shell… a sliver of a simmering-shimmering shell shocked at where she’s settled.
Silently sinking, the sea salty on her lips, burning the breath from her lungs.
The prompt for the day is a favorite of my writing twin, but for me it’s always a challenge. Today was called Sonnet Sunday, and the challenge was to write …. Wait for it… a sonnet!
A traditional sonnet is 14 lines long, with each line having ten syllables that are in iambic pentameter (where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable). Blah blah blah… read between the lines that I’m not feeling in the Shakespeare way today. Still the theme was love and I tried my best, but what you see is what I got.
I chose a more modern version of the sonnet. I chose a curtal sonnet. The curtal sonnet is a form invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and used in three of his poems. It is an eleven-line (or, more accurately, ten-and-a-half-line) sonnet, this the name “curtal”—a curtailed or contracted sonnet.
This type of sonnet refers to a sonnet of 11 lines rhyming abcabc dcbdc or abcabc dbcdc with the last line a tail, or half a line. I’m not sure at all that I did it “right”, but the practice was engaging and valuable as always.
Yes I know…
Some of you are thinking “whatever, Carla”…trust me I feel the same but I press on with the practice because it brings me joy. So… here is my rather interesting take on a love sonnet to a thief. Enjoy!
Love
Perchance one day she’ll catch the old thief who slipped and stole—tip toe hush hush—the wind that rose beneath her sails. She’ll jaunt away with jubilee on a junket of her own motif. She found not a soul had noticed her wilted woes— instead the slippery folk strained their necks to see. Ranting relief brought rancor and rage; after carefully crafted and curated glee, she discovered the power of poems and prose. Freedom fell and she escaped that golden-gilded cage— she found her sanity.
One full week of NaPoWrMo is already gone, but no worries because we still have three more to go. Yay! I love this month!
The daily prompt for today was to start by reading James Tate’s poem “The List of Famous Hats.” Then I had to write a poem that plays with the idea of a list.
I never know exactly where these prompts will take me, which why I never grow tired of participating in this challenge. Every day is a new writing adventure!
Here’s hoping you don’t get so lost in my list poem that you forget to enjoy your morning coffee! I can tell my brain was definitely heading down a lighter path today.
Lost
in darkness in bliss in ignorance in sleep
in silence in ideas in thought in the deep
in reverie in a book in the world in life
in love in work in struggle in strife
Lost without hope without love without grace
without purpose without plan without peace without place
Happy third day (and first Monday) of Na/GloPoWriMo.
The prompt for the day was to find a shortish poem that I liked and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite. I found what the writing prompt stated to be quite accurate: “Your first draft of this kind of “opposite” poem will likely need a little polishing, but this is a fun way to respond to a poem you like, while also learning how that poem’s rhetorical strategies really work. (It’s sort of like taking a radio apart and putting it back together, but for poetry).”
I chose a poem written by the brilliant Marie Buck called “Feathery Shapes in the Rock Pile”. Here is my take:
Undercurrent
On my body, marks remain: invisible dingy defined. Holding on easier than the work of release.
I exerted very little and very seldom. The satisfaction of ignoring, dripping down my forehead and furrowing into brows of rage.
—Carla Jeanne
The original poem:
Feathery Shapes in the Rock Pile
On my face sits a stain: representative CEO child. All move me along to the liberty of horrors.
I had to work very much and very hard. The sweat was running down my skin, my hand was shaken by the extremely decaying body. (54)
Photo Credit: Marcus Ganahl who made this image available for free on Unsplash
The final prompt of NaPoWriMo was a challenge to write a cento. This is a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems. If you’ve never heard of one before, join the club. I hadn’t either.
Here is an example from John Ashbery: “The Dong with the Luminous Nose,” and here it is again, fully annotated to show where every line originated. A cento might seem like a complex undertaking – and one that requires you to have umpteen poetry books at your fingertips for reference – but according to the folks at NaPoWriMo, I didn’t have to write a long one.
In spite of “tips” to help me “jump-start the process”, this was a considerable bigger undertaking than I originally thought.
Because my friend lost her daughter (and my Lizi’s best friend) on this date, I often write a poem dedicated to her on the last day of NaPoWriMo. This poem is in memory of Jacy Lynn Dettloff and in honor of my friends, Susan, Steve, and Mick Dettloff who lost their beloved daughter and sister 21 years ago today.
This year (in August) Jacy would have been 30 years old. I know this because she and my son Aaron were born just a few days apart.
The grief tears at my heart as well.
Grief In Four Parts
1.
The River
Grief is a river you wade in until you get to the other side.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
then maybe—just maybe—the hours will carry you
into June, when the roses blow.
The air around you fills with butterflies.
I do not know how to hold all the beauty and sorrow of my life.
The morning air is all awash with angels,
and are we supposed to believe she can suddenly talk angel?
2.
The Desert
Little petal of my heart,
I didn’t know where I was going.
I was always leaving, I was
desolate and lone.
3.
The Night
If but I could have wrapped you in myself
I would I might forget that I am I--
a smile of joy, since I was born.
Things change on the morning of the birthday—
the hope is in wakening to this your last dream.
The shadows of you are around me;
the evening shadow has sunk
gleaming. So I can
come walking into this big silence.
4.
Hope
A daughter is not a passing cloud, but permanent;
she's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Dare the deliberately happy to butterfly the gnarled roots of life—
Grief dies like joy; the tears upon my cheek—
“Hope” is the thing with feathers.
--A Cento poem by cjpjordan
Grief in Four Parts (Annotated)
Grief is a river you wade in until you get to the other side.
Barbara Crooker, “Grief”
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Grief”
When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
Matthew Dickman, “Grief”
then maybe—just maybe—the hours will carry you
into June, when the roses blow.
Gottfried Benn, “Last Spring”
The air around you fills with butterflies--
Katherine Garrison Chapin, “Butterflies”
I do not know how to hold all the beauty and sorrow of my life.
Cynthia Zarin, “Flowers”
The morning air is all awash with angels
Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”
and are we supposed to believe she can suddenly talk angel?
Mary Sybist, “Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle”
Little petal of my heart!
Hilda Conkllng, “A Little Girl's Songs”
I didn’t know where I was going
Robert Vandermolen, “Flowers”
I was always leaving, I was
Jean Nordhaus, “I Was Always Leaving”
Desolate and lone
Carl Sandburg, “Lost”
If but I could have wrapped you in myself
D.H. Lawrence, “Grief”
I would I might forget that I am I--
George Santayana, “I would I might Forget that I am I”
a smile of joy, since I was born.
Emily Bronte, “I Am the Only Being Whose Doom”
Things change on the morning of the birthday
The hope is in wakening to this your last dream
Theodore Holmes, “In Becoming of Age”
The shadows of you are around me
Kathryn Soniat, “Daughter”
the evening shadow has sunk
D.H. Lawrence, “Daughter Of the great Man”
gleaming. So I can
Jennifer Richter, “My Daughter Brings Home Bones”
come walking into this big silence
Josephine Miles, “Dream”
A daughter is not a passing cloud, but permanent;
James Lenfestey, “Daughter”
she's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Carmen Gimenez Smith, “The Daughter”
Dare the deliberately happy to butterfly the gnarled roots of life—
Amy King, “Butterfly the Gnarled”
Grief dies like joy; the tears upon my cheek—
Henry Timrod, “Sonnet: Grief Dies”
“Hope” is the thing with feathers.
Emily Dickinson, ““Hope” is the thing with feathers”
Today’s prompt was based on the aisling, a poetic form that developed in Ireland. An aisling recounts a dream or vision featuring a woman who represents the land or country on/in which the poet lives, and who speaks to the poet about it.
Today’s challenge was to write a poem that recounts a dream or vision, and in which a woman appears who represents or reflects the area in which I live.
We shall see how this goes today. We shall see what form my dream-visitor takes.
Happy reading!
Our Lady of the Garden
In the garden a tiny, perfect bird landed on my shoulder.
Jewel-toned and stunning, the bird morphed into a beautiful woman right before my eyes.
The trumpet vines flashing brilliant orange flowers shone in the sun like a halo around her head.
My angel with her flaming crown, and delicate hands, she felt born of spirit, born of dream.
Sing, she told me Sing of the Universe. Sing of the beauty of the earth.
In my dream-state I sing her song.
I see in her the land and sky; she connects me to water and earth. The waves roll in her laughter; the plants flourish under her hands.
From my heart I sing of us.
We become a tapestry, woven together— garden and bird, woman and earth.
When I wake, it is daylight. I look out my window and see a hummingbird— wings whirling without resting— sipping nectar from flaming goblets shaped like trumpet flowers.
Poetry, Ponderings and Possibilities 