Category: Musings on Extemporanea

{pf: poetry peeps pruning poems}

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September 29, 2023

4:51 am

14 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps pruning poems}

Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, What We Do, Who We Are

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of September! Here’s the scoop: We’re writing Bouts-Rimé, which in French means literally ‘rhymed-ends.’ Bouts-Rimé is a poetry challenge wherein you supply a set of fourteen rhyming words, like June, stress, moon, obsess, snake, moot, cake, beaut, Garbo, play, hobo, day, rhinestone, cologne (from Columbia College’s journal, 2006), exchange them with a friend or poetry group, and then write a poem to the rhymes in the same order that they were placed upon the list. Great ingenuity is required to create something coherent – which is, of course, 90% of the fun. Are you in? Good! The Poetry Sisters are continuing to throw our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION into the mix. Whatever your topic or theme, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on October 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

Poetry Friday today is brought to you by the word ‘WITTY’ and is hosted by the generous, lovely, and delightfully witty Jama-J at Alphabet Soup. Do pop on over for poetry goodness that is not these rather silly poems of mine!

Oh, my goodness, poets, buckle up. Diminishing or Pruning Poems appear to be simple – but of course, you know the Poetry Sisters drill by now. Nothing we ever attempt – despite our best efforts – can ever just be easy. A poem built around a single rhyming word which diminishes by a single letter per line? Now, how hard could that be???

::insert eyeroll::

In order to find words to prune, I started with digraph and trigraph consonant blends, imagining that more consonants on the beginnings or ends of words would help. They did, kind of… however, the words I found somehow just did NOT seem to lend themselves to anything poetic. Scrump? Relapse? Paeon? Feel the poetry there, folks. I asked Himself to dig into his lists of words (yes, he keeps lists of words for fun, yes, you knew we were word-loving nerds in this house) and I pulled quite a few I could work with, but… even so, I started feeling like I was writing middle school assignments with these three line little… ditties. I don’t know, it didn’t feel very poetic, but you know, I started to lean into the brevity and the simplicity of idea, and the playfulness. Not all of them are worth sharing, but I have a few…

I’ll have you know, today’s poetry reveal is a reveal for all of us – due to several unforeseen circumstances only two of the Poetry Sisters met for our usual co-writing hour last Sunday, so we have the added amusement of not knowing anything about what anyone else is posting! But, if you check out Tricia’s poem here, you’ll get your first idea. Liz’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s is here. Michelle K’s poem is here, along with an offering of art, and Denise Krebs is writing poems of presence here. Linda B’s poem is here, and Carol V.’s seasonally perfect poem is here. Kelly, Laura and Sara are sitting out this dance, but more Peeps rising to the poetry challenge will be checking in throughout the weekend, so stay tuned for the full pruning poem round-up.

(CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE) Thematically, these poems are eccentric (#transformationfail), so… enjoy.

I had to include this one, even though TECHNICALLY this one doesn’t “count.” The rules of the Pruning Form describe the word that you choose to prune as “rhyming.” Morally, orally, rally, and ally sadly do NOT. However, I couldn’t pass it up.

Notes On Sixth Period Lunch Period, or “No One Wants to See Chewed Food, Guys”

MORALLY, it’s the right thing to do.
ORALLY, it’s tasteful and smart when you chew, to
RALLY your manners, whatever you do, and
ALLY yourself with a mannerly crew.

After having my LIFE changed by Nikki Giovanni’s poem, “Allowables,” I’ve tried to be a bit more Zen about all the life around me, even those bits of life I really despise. So, um… fleas are the longest/highest jumpers in the world? Yay? Still want them and mosquitoes to stay away from me, though. Shoo them with fire!

Yes, They’re Cool and All, But…

That ABLEST of jumpers, the house
flea is BLEST with thirst
like a vampire’s, LEST any forget!

As you can see, I may have a ways to go with the Zen thing…

Incidentally, I’ve begun to ask myself what it is about this form that brings out… the wildlife for me. I hadn’t honestly even realized I was writing zoology poems until…now? Anyway, this little ditty almost felt like it was cheating because of the palindromic poem “Madam, I’m Adam” which made me think of madam as a word choice – but I’ll take it anyway:

ALWAYS PAY YOUR ENGINEER!

MADAM, we’re strangers: you don’t know me from
ADAM, however, your beaver has built me a
DAM. He’s billed, so I’ll pay him. That’s just who I
AM.

Look, I WARNED you they were a little goofy.

Shout out to the people who want to take libraries back to the days when the only books were to their tastes (perhaps – we’re not sure they ever actually, you know, read whole books), the only patrons were controlled and silent, and the only senators of note were named McCarthy. That era is aspirational for someone out there, but brace yourself, it’s not gonna happen, folks, so beware…!

Reminder: The Library Is For Everyone

SHUSHERS in the library whose
HUSHERS silence crave, you
USHER in the urge to make some noise and misbehave!

And, it’s back to the natural world – and a stop by the garden for a final salute to the beauty and peace I’ve found with my little DIY meadow this summer. Happy Friday to all, as the last vestiges of summer diminish and we welcome in the crisp and chilly – the fading, the falling, the fallow, the mist and the moss that means autumn’s arriving, amplifying and approaching its peak.

Summerfree

ASWARM in the garden aloud with their wings, a
SWARM of striped, bumbling, honeybees.
WARM thoughts of summer days bring to me:
ARMs and legs and feet bare. Free..

I’d LOVE to see you try your hand at some Pruning poems with some of the words I’ve chosen, or others. Uneaten. Abraid/Abrade (the first archaic spelling is still a word, thus legal for Scrabble, FYI). Slabs. Prelate. There’s got to be a poem somewhere in these most mundane of words!

Here’s to making a little time for wordplay – and even if your efforts are not the wittiest, the English language is such a rich, deep well from which to draw that it keeps our thirsty brains busy being smarty-panters. And, cheers to those bi or trilingualists who can riff in multiple languages, or with fingerspelling! Here’s to the world of words – and long may it do anything but diminish us.

Happy Weekend!

{pf peeps pick over an exquisite corpse}

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August 24, 2023

11:59 pm

13 Comments on {pf peeps pick over an exquisite corpse}

Musings on Extemporanea

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of September! Here’s the scoop: We’re writing a Diminishing — OR a Culminating Verse – Wikipedia calls them “pruning poems.” The last word in each line loses a letter from the end, yet remains a word – for instance, sticky becomes tick-y, and then icky. This will force you to use all your wiles, and will also force us to produce some pretty short poems. Are you in? Good! The Poetry Sisters are continuing to throw our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION into the mix. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on September 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

I’ve fallen in love with the oddly named Exquisite Corpse poetry form. Perhaps it’s the fact that it is kind of Poetry, But Make It A Game, and there’s failure already baked in from scratch that makes it so compulsively enjoyable. If everyone in your neighborhood right now rolled up to your front porch with a line from a poem (already written or original), you know that lined up in they order of arrival, it would be complete gibberish. And yet! That you can massage it into some kind of shape from there is such a fun and freeing notion.

We’ve played with corps — ew, no. We’ve DONE THIS FORM before, but this time, the Poetry Sisters chose to mine Linda Mitchell’s clunkers for help as well as our brains – giving us quite a few more lines to work with, and, oddly, some kind of a theme. There’s no waste in wordplay, and we love to see a good line reused. A fine example of a great revision of an exquisite corpse can be found in Tricia’s story poem. Or Kelly’s sonnet.. Or Liz’s spare lines. Here’s Sara’s wordsmithing, and here’s Laura’s poem. Here’s Linda M. and Michelle K.’s collaborative corpses. Other participating Poetry Peeps will be posting throughout the weekend, so check back for a full-roundup.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

So, when we met last Sunday, we threw our lines into the “bucket,” and this is what we found:”

An Exquisite Draft

They say the mind is garden-like, with thoughts as sprouting seeds
*but I’m left holding cuttings I’m not sure where to plant
Weedy-thick, the prickly buds of odd logic bloom:
*You don’t cry anymore, but you sing all the words.
Each line in a different language as the light shifts,
*trees turned so orange the road looked blue.
Words tangle, colors muddy in the palette.
*I am no longer winsome to the sun.
*a whole sun’s rise to share
there goes the one that got away
*found a bit of sunflower
and plucked every petal (by the way, he loves me)
and then I remembered
*that’s what you wrote about the green beans
Stockpile, then, that snap and sass to sweeten your September.

In a way, this is already a poem. Even without knowing the other lines folks had chosen, we selected a lot of imagery of the natural world, of colors, and then, of … emotional states? Moods?? Most of us loved different bits of it, and most of had an idea of what we could do with it.

I… had no idea what to do with it.

It was my own fault. Mine was the first line, and it was a teensy bit of mockery for a Hallmark-esque phrase I heard a lot in junior high. ““Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.” And yes, please read that in the sing-songy little tone it deserves. This is akin to the sing-songy little “Everyone has two wolves” quote – both of which, don’t get me wrong, are PERFECTLY FINE analogies for how much control we have over our attitudes. PLEASE don’t feel weird if these are among your most beloved lines. Hearing them and others like them so much while growing up, however, mainly made me resentful of being told I could curate my thoughts like plants, and somehow yank out what was objectionable. In the brain-itchy, out-of-control emotional state of adolescence, I generally felt like my thoughts were MOSTLY weeds, so how was I supposed to cultivate the delicate freakin’ flowers everyone wanted of me???

Well. When you start a poem with snark, you have to end it with something a little better. So, I worked at this one — and while it’s still pretty much sing-songy drivel, I had fun with it.

Basically, that’s what counts.

In The Weeds

They say your mind is garden-like, your thoughts sprouting like seeds
(The cuttings that I’m rooting have their provenance as weeds.)
Sharp prickles, thick with offbeat buds of logic is their yield,
A soulful symphony of subtle shades therein revealed.
Each bract a shift of bright and dark, a language grown of leaves –
Petals and sepals, solid shapes sift sunlight through their sleeves.

Some tangled notions whip and twist like curly willows grow.
No-longer-winsome thoughts grow grimly dim and mute their glow.
A whole sun’s rise, a meadow-loud world truly made for joy
Yet wayward thoughts chase what is lost …that blight a bloom destroys.
But come the morning, light returns – perhaps cupped in sunflowers,
Knowing we’re loved and love’s returned remains a superpower.

If nothing more of plants and weeds and thoughts you can remember
That morning COMES is all that counts – rekindle with that ember.

Poetry Friday is ably hosted today by Linda Baie over at TeacherDance – thanks, Linda, for taking time in your busy school-time for poetry!

And now it’s time to tend your gardens – the weekend comes to make us take time for rest and a bit of raking, maybe. Be good to yourselves friends — even if you do grow weeds.

{acknowledgements again}

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August 2, 2023

1:39 pm

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Musings on Extemporanea

We’ve had this talk before, where I see the [TK] left deliberately blank in my copy editing notes and feel like I Ought To Say Something, but, in an effort to be true to my actual self, whose lack of reading of acknowledgements is a fact of my own existence, each time I resist. I put in a dedication – those are meant to be short. But, until I start writing nonfiction, or at the very least, unless it’s in a fiction book where I make wide use of nonfiction sources, I don’t see myself writing acknowledgements.

Not that my work exists in a vacuum. I know very well that I could acknowledge my writing group in every single book I write. They have to put up with me backing up, turning, and staggering forward again, like a drunken Roomba trying to avoid a spot in the carpet. They’re good people who listen to me agonize, and read my efforts that sometimes don’t cover much new ground. However, I do the same for them, and that’s our contract – we read each other’s worst crap, so it gets better.

Not that I don’t owe gratitude to the number of websites, books, and references materials I do use. To the therapists whose articles in Psychology Today inform some of my conclusions. To the sociologists whose work on humanity in groups helps me understand what I want to see, and how I want to explain it. The fact is, I have a ton of acknowledgements I could write, but I write children’s books. Kids don’t read those things, and writing something in a children’s book not intended for children feels kind of pretentious – from me, anyway – to write.

So, once again, I lay my acknowledgements here – where very few people will still read them, but where I feel like less of a soppy dolt for inflicting them on the world at large, vague and large as my gratitude tends to be.

♦ ♦ ♦

I acknowledge that the known world is, for many, decaying into entropy, by design. Things are no longer meant to be counted on, including goods and services, social media sites (sigh, Twixter), and more. Via capitalism we’re meant to propel civilization forward in a world largely indifferent to human needs and desires, basic things like facts, and fundamental human connection. We live in a hellscape, and it’s largely of our own making.

And yet, Science.

It is likely not easy to be in science in this environment. It is about as easy as it is to be a junior high girl, and yet, exactly like junior high girls, science keeps going. Inquiry keeps being fueled by inquiring minds. Rigor and clarity and research goes on. Answers people dismiss and dislike are produced, and methodologies which help and heal are discovered. And some of it is published online and I don’t quite understand it, but I acknowledge it: thank you to the scientists who published studies and grad school papers where I could find them, to use in my novel about a girl who discovered that sometimes girls are just mean, but that knowing your worth and holding onto that are the biggest things you can learn to do. Thank you, Science, for continuing to know your own worth in a world where liars hold office, and attempt to use the lever of government to remake the world in their image. Thank you, Science, for being there, even when my shaky Creationist-raised hold on you means I’m not entirely positive of what is in my hands. Thank you, scientists, who keep trying to explain.

Thank you, Dr. Faucci, you poor, patient man.

Thank you, Hank Green for educating a great many of us, and thank you, Brothers Green, for existing, and reminding us that science and faith can exist, and love each other without being awful about it.

I acknowledge that junior high is awful, the world is terrible, and yet, Science exists. And so here, my last acknowledgement – in spite of everything, we have something for which to be thankful.

{pf: pp go mano a mano with monotetras}

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July 28, 2023

5:29 am

20 Comments on {pf: pp go mano a mano with monotetras}

General Coolness, Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry Peeps adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of August! Here’s the scoop: We’re doing Exquisite Corpse poetry. These collaborative poems necessarily involve yourself and at least one other passing lines or stanzas along, so now’s the time to start choosing poetry compatriots. Are you in? Good! The Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION somehow wedged or sneaked into this form – and we’re going to also sneak in a few of Linda Mitchell’s clunkers to give us more to play with. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on August 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

It’s eleventy billion degrees here as I’m writing this (though tomorrow is forecast to be a whole five degrees cooler) and I view the calendar with horror… After a mostly mild summer which has suddenly hit ridiculous temperatures, it’s almost August… Which means it’s all but over. What?! My tomatoes haven’t even bothered to ripen!! In our neck of the woods, by August 1st, many teachers report back to school. At my nephew’s school, August 13th… is the first day of classes.

As the Bard says, “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”

As always, my imagination takes me back to school this time of year (no matter how former, no teacher ever seems to lose the idea that September begins a new year) and I was thinking about the differences between my nephew at the beginning of his junior high experience, when he was a talkative, shorter, rounder person – and who he became by the end of it – a lanky, tall person who won’t use two words when a grunt and a side-eye would do. These thoughts fit well into our poetic theme of transformation — though for a while it felt like not much fit a monotetra. This is such a deceptively simple form, just four lines and eight syllables per line – but the final line repeating the same four syllables was… hard. With such a short syllable allotment for the stanzas, it feels as if each word should do more work than simply sitting there, so a repetition seemed pointless. I tried to make it work with homonyms – and I’m aware I wasn’t entirely successful (and at one point just gave myself an out to do what I wanted) but did I mention that it’s eleventy billion degrees out? I’m doing a patented L.P. Salas One & Done today, since normally we’re all a mite envious of her ability to just crank a poem out and call it good. We peeps are here for the PRACTICE of poetry, not the perfection of it, and I’ve officially practiced. I’m out.

(Gotta admit, though, that I did like playing with the homonyms, and sometime when I’m in a better mood, this might be a form to revisit. For someone who usually doesn’t mind requirements of rhymes and rules and syllables … the final line thing felt unnecessary, and for me, didn’t add anything. Others may have had a MUCH better time, however, so don’t miss the Laura Salas special, or Sara’s poemsmith-ery, or Mary Lee’s wordswimming. Tricia’s poeming is here, and Liz’s poem is here. Michelle K’s parrot poem is here, and Heidi’s nototetra slays me, while Linda B’s is scary. Carol’s gorgeous flowers (and poem) are here. Kelly isn’t with us this month, but other Peeps may be checking in with their masterful monotetra-ing throughout the weekend, so stay tuned.) Don’t miss the Bookseed Studio Dragonfly Bonanza – thanks Jan, for hosting Poetry Friday today!


EIGHTH GRADE

when you walk into a classroom
in eight grade, you won’t assume
that you’re a bud about to bloom:
(Cramped petals push: Make room! Make room!)

In every classroom, eyes compare
Those newly tall, some longer hair
Such change! Arriving from nowhere!
Of who, what, where – you’re quite aware.

Suddenly, last year’s playground joy
Is sneered at – who’s got time for toys?
The things you once loved now annoy.
You’re moody, coy, your moods decoy.

Fast as the year is passing by,
The sparkling social butterflies
Befriend the world. You’re so tongue-tied
You get a high from saying “hi.”

But then – the last class of the year!
One final test, and then a cheer
Erupting, you launch into gear.
You leap like deer. You disappear.

One thing the endless round of school years reminds us is that time. just. flies. The days get shorter and the years blur faster and the what you wanted to do won’t wait for the when you thought you would do it… No matter what happened yesterday, there is still a road forward into tomorrow. Now is the best present we’re ever going to get – so grab it with all your senses and make it count. Here’s to leaning open-heartedly into your one wild, precious life. Happy (Breathlessly Hot) Weekend.

{how is it the end of may, and other queries}

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May 30, 2023

2:22 pm

3 Comments on {how is it the end of may, and other queries}

Happenings, Intellectual curiosity, Literary Life Observations, Mental Health, Musings on Extemporanea

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

~ Anais Nin

So ends the merry, merry month of May, which brought to my circle, weather extremes, dishwashers blowing up, Achilles’s tendon surgery, mental health break, court dates, new, difficult medications, sudden sibling deaths, broken-into cars, suicide, lost jobs, lost illustrators, and plenty of book rejections, as always. May presented my larger circle the writer’s strike, persistent book censorship, a disappointing buy-in on the part of the industry (especially side-eying you, Scholastic) who want to appear in virtuous support of diversity and inclusivity, but who in truth bow to the loudest shareholder monies, and corporations moving hesitantly towards ethical behavior without ever embracing or wholeheartedly championing it. And further out from that, nationally, globally, May has continued to reveal to us ugly social divisions, war and its proxies, the high incidences of violence globally against immigrants, violence against trans persons, Asian, and Black communities in the US that goes on, and on, and on, a rising shriek in our collective ears. I’m thinking we’ve somehow cosmically agreed to delay the “merry” from this month until another day.

And yet, May has also been what it always is, a season of growth, a season of renewal, and a season of change. Yesterday I found the first morning glory blossom, peeking shyly from beneath a broad leaf. The hollyhocks are hip high and the dahlias buds grow fatter every day. The chard and lettuce are tiny, tender shoots, the walking onions stand tall in lines, and all the hard squashes and watermelon have more than six leaves. The last of the corn goes in this week, and the potatoes, ahead of a fall harvest. And there are tomato flowers.

In this grim place, there is still life affirmed. Even in an endless night, there are stars.

This month of shifting tides finds me once again reevaluating issues of religion/faith/denomination, re-examining my abilities to write, and contemplating my reasons for publishing. It is, in many ways, something I used to do more nebulously, a sort of anxious, “should I be quiet now? Do I any longer have anything to say?” angst that rattled in my mental background, but I feel it adds value to be deliberate in these thoughts, to let them come and be spoken aloud, instead of merely haunting me from shadowed corners. Who am I? What is my role? Why should I take up space? Each round of this kind of thinking moves me… some direction.

How about you? What questions are you asking, as the seasons blend and flowers move towards fruiting?

We learn things, through these revelatory moments in our lives. Trees age in circles, tides push us out, and draw us in again, moment by moment, step by step, always moving somewhere both familiar and new. I feel like I am moving both closer to my real self, and further out to sea. My closest relationships are becoming more genuine, and the ones which are …less, are fading. The refining continues to cycle things closer to the heart of the flame, and move what is mere dross further away. The Byrds echoed Ecclesiastes, “to everything there is a season.” All things will be revealed – finished and refined – in due time. So much of life and art is about our process, about waiting and being. About, in the wise words of the late Robin Smith, being here NOW. The seeds have been planted, the water is in place, and from this moment on, it’s about being present to take in each new unfolding, each new direction, each reset and rekindling of our purpose.

This is, admittedly, not my favorite part. I hate these treading water bits of life, this sense of standing in a boat while it’s being sloshed from stem to stern, while the tide is drawing in or running out, and we’re just trying to keep our balance. And yet – it’s been a month of unpacking some things, in between bouts of flailing about and wondering if I’m doing anything right at all. I sense an answer may be just around the corner…

…but, until then, we wait. We listen.

Here. Ready, though hesitant. Willing, though uneasy. Open to the next move.

{pf: poetry peeps drink deep of the ghazel}

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May 26, 2023

5:08 am

11 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps drink deep of the ghazel}

Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, What We Do, Who We Are

Greetings! Welcome to another Poetry Peeps adventure on Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge in the month of June! Here’s the scoop: we’re writing in response to a quotation. Ours is an excerpt from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 359, in the chapter “People of Corn, People of Light:” “If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.” How does that strike you? This time, the form and way you use this quotation – or another one which strikes your fancy – is totally up to you, but the Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. You have a month to craft your creation and share it on June 30th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

I feel like a dropped mirror – seven years of indifferent luck and little shards of self reflecting any number of different realities. This revision has just wrung me out – but in a better way than I had any right to expect of a novel outline done in a fit of pique that took me deeper than I expected. Himself sat patiently with me the times I completely wigged out and moaned aloud that I was never going to finish this on time. (I did. I always do. I always have. What is work, if you can’t be really dramatic about it, though?)

Oddly, all of this feels like really good prep for doing a ghazel.

No, seriously.

The #1 hardest thing for me to …embody in this couplet form is a sense of disjointedness. No, you’re not telling a story. No, you’re not pulling together the unified theory of anything. No, you’re not supposed to create an ensemble performance. Agha Shahid Ali, the poet who edited Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, in his foreword compared each ghazal couplet to “a stone from a necklace,” which should continue to “shine in that vivid isolation.” Sara had a great idea when she suggested we think of it as a new “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,”, by Wallace Stevens. That’s the level of splintered we’re going for – and while I’ve been working the past several months on being able to be … loose with words and wordplay, this was still quite a challenge. Dabbling in Neruda last month helped create a feeling of voluptuous abandon with words. This month, I wanted less to luxuriate, and more to make clockwork, ticking along with a limited pas de deux, each couplet touched and spinning perfectly for just a moment…

Well, that was the idea, anyway.

After writing THREE of the bloody things, each one more hated than the last, I took Marilyn Hacker’s “Dark Times” as my mentor text, and tried again… I only lightly kept to our transformation theme, but I tried to order the couplets from darkness into light, or at least from skies of gray to deeper shades of blue.

“Bad Times”

Did thriftiness (or hoarding) got them THROUGH the bad times?
“Use it up, wear it out, make up, or make do” the bad times.

Expansive “destiny,” proud wagons Westward believed
Sepia-tinted lies: this past previewed the bad times.

Did colonialism urge dominion, so might made right?
Post-planet Earth, what’s our next berth, as we accrue the bad times?

Sixteen-nineteen, heartwood filled hell’s incinerator
Nineteen-thirty-three new genocide renewed the bad times.

Prayers on Angel Island’s walls, grief observed in stone.
Regardless of race, the spirit debut in the bad times.

No “time of trouble” singular – disasters, naturally,
Buffet with waves a weary world in view of the bad times.

Sing out for voices silenced, lift memorials, and rise,
For those war-broken who remain black and blue from the bad times.

What generation will survive? A remnant, not a nation
For thick-heads still persist and MISCONSTRUE the bad times.

What metals alloyed, intertwined strengthen weak to strong?
Fired copper, iron, gold sings TRUE in the bad times.

There’s always more poetry. Sara brought this to the table. And here’s Laura’s. Tricia’s poem is here, and Liz’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s lakeside ghazel is here, while Michelle K. joined the challenge here. Heidi’s ghazal is right here. More Poetry Peeps will be checking in throughout the weekend, so don’t forget to come back and read the whole roundup. Meanwhile, Poetry Friday is hosted today by Patricia at Reverie. Thanks, Patricia!

A Buddhist koan about life after enlightenment says that “A broken mirror never reflects again; fallen flowers never go back to the old branches.” Well, I’ll respectfully disagree – of course a broken mirror still works! It merely reflects different pieces of the same sky, which is both a kind of clarity and a kind of distance I think I can live with. And if you’re feeling a little broken, a little blurry, taped-together, and wonky, don’t worry, friends. You’re not alone. ♥

Pax.

{pf: poetry peeps appreciate Pablo (Neruda)}

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April 28, 2023

10:05 am

15 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps appreciate Pablo (Neruda)}

Mental Health, Musings on Extemporanea, NPM, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Greetings! Welcome to another Poetry Peeps adventure on Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge in the month of May! Here’s the scoop: we’re writing a ghazal. The ghazal (tripping correctly from the tongue as “guzzle” – with apologies to those of you giving it a French flair as I used to) is the oldest poetic form still in use, with roots in Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, and Hebrew traditions. A ghazal is made to be sung, and is a couplet-based form with internal rhyme. (Find out more about it at Poets.org.) As always, the topic is totally up to you, but the Poetry Sisters are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. You have a month to craft your creation and share it on May 26th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

I feel like I need to set up a camera in the garden, so I can capture the milometers-per-hour growth of my seedlings. We have hit the 80°F mark this week in my part of the world for the first time in 2023, and the acceleration of — everything green is just gobsmacking. We’re happily stashing windbreakers and pulling out our short sleeves. …For the most part, anyway.

Last week at my Sunday gig (choir #2), a friend stepped behind the pulpit and slipped off her cardigan to put on her robe. She saw me watching her and winced. “I don’t usually wear sleeveless dresses,” she explained hurriedly. “My arms just look so bad…so crepey.”

Of course, I fussed at her about it, as we do with friends. She looked gorgeous in her spiffy dress, which I’d complimented the moment I’d seen it and I reiterated. I told her it was a gorgeous day and she had a gorgeous set of arms that needed to feel the sun on them. And then we settled down to warm up and rehearse.

But, I kept thinking about it.

Poets, my friend is eighty years old. She is a size six, maybe a seven. She swims one hundred laps in an Olympic pool three times a week, and walks two miles the other two days. She sings in the choir with me, and she’s louder and has a longer range. She sports a perfect layered cinnamon-brown bob with nary a silver strand twinkling, as well as perfect manicure at all times. More, she’s kind and funny. And she’s still worried that her upper arms look bad.

As I said to the Poetry Sisters when I mentioned this, good Lord, at some point we HAVE to be enough.

I mean, I get it. I don’t display my upper arms. Having been various sizes of fat my whole life, even when I was really lifting weights and playing sports, they were still… squishy in a way that was socially unacceptable. Bigger than other girls. I never wear sleeveless things outside of the house. But, I will not be eighty years old and still worrying about this crud. I. Will. NOT.

And so I wrote a lovely sonnet to my upper arms. The style of Pablo Neruda to me is layered and rich, loquacious and bountiful — just like my arms. He writes a lot of love poems, heady and redolent with beautiful language with which he woos the reader. I choose to attribute that to his Argentine heritage, a beautiful country filled with beautiful people speaking a lilting and glorious (and gloriously complicated, I say from the perspective of sixteen hundred days on Duolingo) language. Using the mentor poem “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII (I don’t love you as if you were a rose)” I speak of my arms – and your arms. And all of our arms. May we embrace ourselves, and our flaws, not like something about which poets sing – some romanticized, perfect thing. Rather, may we embrace ourselves as if we’re children who may or may not be sweaty, muddy, covered in pet hair, widdle, puke, snot, or tears and still – cherished, and worthy of love.

I Do Not Love You ‘As If’

I don’t love you as if you were a summer fruit, warm,
Firm, perfumed and toothsome:
I love you as an auntie loves a defiant toddler,
Exasperation woven from skeins of amusement and resignation.

I love you as the corner of the yard the cats favor,
Dense blooming bush beneath which they lie concealed, tails twitching,
Keen to pounce and leap and rend, replacing peace with panic,
Forcing conflict and change, challenge and confrontation.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or for what,
I love you austerely, without expectation or prediction,
I love you like this because I know no way but this, to embrace
The flawed and the fleshy, the crepey, creased, amd changed,
Complete in this moment as the sweet-fleshed perfection of a ripened peach,
Complete in this broad-shouldered, wide-bellied work of cradling a wailing world.

There’s always more poetry. You should see what Liz wrote. And here’s Mary Lee’s. Tricia’s poem is here. Michelle K’s poem is here. Heidi is “Neruda-ing” (yes, that IS a word) here. More Poetry Peeps will be checking in throughout the weekend, so don’t forget to come back and read the whole roundup. Meanwhile, Poetry Friday today is hosted by Ruth at There Is Not Such Thing As A Godforsaken Town. Thanks, Ruth, and Happy Seventeenth Blog Birthday!

Well, back to the garden, poets. I’m sending you out with a hug, from my arms to yours. Happy Weekend, you are loved. ♥

{pf: the poetry peeps picture it}

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February 24, 2023

4:04 am

27 Comments on {pf: the poetry peeps picture it}

Musings on Extemporanea, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Greetings! Welcome to another Poetry Peeps adventure on Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge in the month of March! Here’s the scoop: we’re writing an etheree. This ten-line form begins with a single syllable, and each line expands by one syllable until the tenth line has ten. We’re continuing with our 2023 theme of transformation, but how you interpret that topically is up to you. You have a month to craft your creation and share it on March 31st in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

Greetings, friends, on this absolutely frigid (for California) morning!

Ekphrastic poetry appeals to the storyteller in me. The story I found in this week’s image took me back to high school auto shop. One of the few girls around, I so wanted to be one of the boys crew, but alas, my time in the shop was an exercise in frustration, as the brave new world of the 90’s era equality wasn’t quite ready for takeoff. (My Freshers auto shop course was called POWDER PUFF Mechanics, and you can bet your backside I refused to take it on principle.) Even my friends only really only let me do the sticky/annoying jobs – greasing bearings, sanding primer, using a tire iron to wrestle tires from rims, draining oil. I lifted and lowered cars on the hydraulic lift (and raised balancing daredevils on it occasionally) and got to wear a coverall like my grandfather. I learned how fragile a powder coat of paint was, and how quickly it could be streaky or unevenly applied (which was why I was told I could only sand and apply primer because I might get distracted while painting). I learned about the toxic corrosion of rust and about sexism, which turned out to be remarkably similar things.

Tricia shared the images which jarred my memory this month. For the show Transformed: Objects Reimagined by American Artists, artist Denice Bizot, who “reclaims, deconstructs and transforms” art from salvage yards and junk heaps, created this image called Urban Flora. On display at The Montclair Art Museum exhibit in New Jersey, it features a 1970’s truck hood the artist found in a salvage shop and beautifully helped along in its state of decay with a hand-held plasma torch. The shapes of flowers and arabesques give the illusion of light, shadow, and movement in the rusty green metal.

Bizot’s intervention in the salvage yard lives of this scrap metal won’t stop rust from chewing it up. Realistically, cutting holes in the truck hood will do even less to preserve it than the weather-worn paint the rust is blooming through. Nothing will save the metal from the destructive transformation it’s undergoing, but how we perceive it… that’s what can change us.

Poetry Friday is hosted over at Tab’s place, so be sure to pop over, and thank you, Tabatha!

There’s a host of other images coming into focus today with the Poetry Peeps. You should see Sara’s poem is here. Tricia’s poem is here, and Liz’s is here. Cousin Mary Lee’s post is here, and Michelle’s post is here, and Carol V’s is here. Molly’s gorgeous image is here, and Heidi’s garden bed is here. Margaret’s dual challenge poem is here. Bridget with her twenty-three words poem is here. More Peeps will be checking in throughout the weekend, so stay tuned for the full round-up.

While I never got to do all the things I wanted to in auto shop, I chose to embrace what made me happy: telling my grandfather about what I was doing (and not telling my Dad, who joined my classmates thinking I shouldn’t be doing it), cherishing the small skills I learned (I can still sand a spot of primer as smooth as a baby’s cheek, thank-you), and getting to work in the cavernous cool of the shop filled with loud noises and sharp smells and the sun glinting rainbows in the oil-and-water puddles on the floor. I tried to paint that into my poem; the choice to redefine something that can, at best, reshape us, and at worst, warp us and simply take it as a gift of memory and let it shine in that way. Here’s to the transformation of time. Happy weekend.

{pf: poetry peeps cascade into transformation}

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January 27, 2023

3:33 am

27 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps cascade into transformation}

Happenings, Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters

Greetings! Welcome to another Poetry Peeps adventure on Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge in the month of February! Here’s the scoop: we’re creating ekphrastic poems! Your choice of form, length, topic, or meter, but each poem should be based on an image you’re willing to share (a Creative Commons image is best if it’s not one you’ve taken yourself or have permission to use). You have a month to craft your creation and share it on February 24th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

January, my friends, has seemed both simultaneously six years and five minutes long. Topping my list of Ugh, No tasks this month was shameless self-promotion for my newly released middle grade novel, and Tech Boy’s office party. The glorious reprieve provided by the pandemic is over, so I had to put on my big girl pants – and my mask, because only the reprieve is over – and get on a boat (in the midst of atmospheric rivers on the eve of a massive flood, whose bright idea was this???) and make small talk over indifferent food with too loud of music. Even beyond the wild wind and the waves, beyond stepping into an ankle deep puddle and running from the dock between showers, it all seemed ghastlier because I hadn’t done it in so long. Social muscles atrophy if ignored, just like every other muscle group.

As the Poetry Sisters sat down to work on our poems this month, we shared stories of what was going on in our lives – and some of us tried writing about it. Whether it was because we were unsure of what to say, or had a lot of ranting to do that didn’t want to fit itself to the Cascade form, few of us were ecstatic about our first drafts. (But you should see what Sara came up with, and here’s Laura’s poem, and Liz’s. Here’s Mary Lee’s, and here’s Tricia’s poem. Jone’s is here, and Heidi’s is here. You’ll find Margaret’s poem here, and Linda B’s poem here, and here’s Michelle’s and this one is Molly’s. Carol V’s poem she dropped off on her way out!. Kelly’s poem is on her desk in New Jersey… and she’s on an even bigger boat than I was on, so check back next month! As the weekend goes on, more Peeps will be joining the fun so check back for the full roundup.)

Additionally, adding an annual theme to our challenges is new for us. Some of us chose to highlight our theme of “transformation” through the poem form itself. The Cascade, I was delighted to learn, was invented by political theorist Udit Bhartia, whose research focuses on “normative democratic theory, comparative constitution-making, and social epistemology.” I noted that whether in the tercet or quatrain form of the Cascade, the poet seems to need to begin with a strong statement that can shift through the rest of the lines. I can see how a political theorist would know how best to use a firm thesis statement!

While I found the tercet to have too few lines, the quatrain was an immediate fit. I had the intention to create something unrhymed – in the name of our annual theme of transformation I intended to at least try to stop rhyming everything – but this off-the-cuff rhymed effort worked out better. Rather than shift lines as my change, I focused on the idea of a resolution, or, as some call it, “setting intentions.”

Introvert Intention

A Show up: half the battle is won.
B Say, “Yes.” People-watch. That’s still fun.
C If “No” tries the world to control –
D Change tunes. A new song feeds the soul.

a So what if “I’m Quiet”‘s your fame?
b A quiet match still kindles flame.
c Though you won’t spark with everyone,
A Show up. Half the battle is won.

d Skill as a good listener amends
e A lack of “crowd-loving” in friends
f Who shine brightest when one-on-one.
B Say, “Yes,” people. Watch – that’s still fun.

g One hour: that’s it. You’ve agreed
h To socialize (TRY). It could lead
i To new friends, new tastes, or new goals,
C If “No” tries the world to control…

j So caution to winds, will you try
k a new way of being, whereby
l you give Chance a new, starring role?
D Change tunes. A new song feeds the soul.

I left the “frame” up so you’ll see how straightforward a Cascade can be. For me, stanzas worked well for me put into sentence form, otherwise I sometimes fell into making short, punchy statements that occasionally sounded unnecessarily aggressive. This was a fun form to play with, and I look forward to digging more into it – maybe even without a rhyme.

(You’ll note that I don’t promise to report on my intentions to socialize more… everything is a work in progress in this transformation business.)

Poetry Friday today is hosted by Jan at Bookseed Studio. If you find yourself faltering already at intentions you’ve set, today is a new day – and it only takes turning a different direction to be at a beginning instead of an ending. Happy Year of the Cat, Rabbit, and Happy Weekend.

{poetry peeps box up 2022}

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December 30, 2022

10:48 am

12 Comments on {poetry peeps box up 2022}

General Coolness, Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, What We Do, Who We Are

Greetings! Welcome to another Poetry Peeps adventure on Poetry Friday!

Normally I’d have next month’s challenge here However, we’re still making the list of poetry forms we’re going to play with in 2023. Stay tuned! And certainly, if you have a suggestion, feel free to drop it in the comments. Happy New Year, Round 1! (Round 2 = Lunar celebration, more on that later.)

Our teaser last month was to let “box” inspire us. Since we just moved house in October, “box” is a lot less inspiring to me than it could be. I wasn’t sure which direction to go… I thought of the ways I can say box… caja, doos, karsten… nope, still not inspired. I thought of the joy of unpacking… the angst of packing, the preference of many two year olds of my acquaintance for the box that holds the gift rather than the gift… amusing, but nothing out of which I could get a poem quickly.
My first go round with the Box form was equally less-than-inspiring to me, but at least I settled on trying the form again. And then I found leftovers from a family game night. My mother sneakily left boxes of treats on the fireplace mantle where I didn’t immediately find them and make sure they went home with her. I immediately knew what to do!

I tried making each poem an individual one this time, even as they all linked to tell a single story. I think that works better for me dealing with the parameters of the Box form. It opened it a bit more to the possibilities…If you’d like to see the other possibilities of being inspired by boxes, do check out Liz’s poem here, Tricia’s wrangle with Lewis Carroll here, Cousin Mary Lee’s poem here, and Laura’s nifty shadow poem here. Molly’s poem is here, Linda M’s Box is here, Carol V’s pre-holiday Box is here, Michelle K’s Box comes stuffed with art too, and Heidi’s Box is here. We welcome Joann and her Box as well. Other peeps are cheering from the sidelines today, and may wander in throughout the weekend, so stay tuned. And thank you to this week’s host, Patricia J. Franz for hosting the roundup.

the debate (or, unboxing match)

i.
A fierce debate
One holiday:
“Ooh! Fudge! Should we
indulge today?”

ii.
Tempting wrangle
A fierce debate:
Want & Greed tie
Should in tangles.

iii.
Only one box…
An urge to sate.
A fierce debate:
(Open? Or wait?)

iv.
Both dark and light,
Bitter and sweet
Real life mandates
This fierce debate.

As I say every year, I loathe the “New You!” insistent January jingles, and the endless ads for gyms and self-improvement with which we’re annually assailed. Don’t forget that you have several new years from which to choose – the Lunar in February, the Zoroastrian or Balinese New Year in March, the Bengali in Mid-April, the Nguni Zulu celebration on the first full moon in July, Rosh Hashana in the autumn and so. many. more. You can start over and value yourself every single month, if you’d like. There’s always time for a new you. And, there’s also always time to eat the box of fudge. Balance the bitter with the sweet. Happy (Neverending Newness) Year.