Category: Cybils News

Welcome to another Poetry Friday Poetry Peeps Adventure!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of October! Here’s the scoop: We’re building! Our prompt comes from p. 139 of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell, and we’re writing a poem in which we literally build and/or take apart something – large or small. Our focus will be on constructing or deconstructing, taking into account technical terms, instructions, and perhaps even material sources. A great mentor poem would be something like this, or this. Are you in? Good! You have a month to craft your creation and share it on October 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals.

It’s literally the eleventh hour as I’m posting this poem, and I’m laughing at myself, because somehow, as sometimes happens, at the last minute, I so disliked what I’d already written and prepared that I had to start over – at about an hour before dinner and two hours before rehearsal tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be glad I did this, though – tomorrow is my husband’s birthday, and I came up with this poem because I was thinking of him.

Originally this Wallace Stevens poetry prompt was meant to be all seven of the Seven Sisters poetry crew getting together to choose ONE object that we looked at seven different ways, but that quickly became a non-starter, as with the onset of the school year, many of us have ramped up school visits, teaching duties, and other stuff. We’ve been having trouble being all in the same place at the same time, so we never did choose one object – but we decided to at least choose something symbolic. We don’t want to choose something meaningless,” A Person said at one point, “like a t-shirt, or a sock.” We then immediately did a 180 on that and discussed how nothing is meaningless in the hands of a good poet (“A sock is a pocket for your toes!” A sock, friends, is never meaningless). Well, that must have percolated in my brain for the following week, because even though I chose “Seven Ways of Looking at a Republic” and later tried to say Something Meaningful about democracy, baseball, voting… and then, eggs, vaccination, and sleep, what finally stuck? “Seven Ways of Looking at an Old Shoe.”

…and, just to get it out of my system, I’m going to go ahead and BLAME SARA for this, because she’s the one who said something about socks, and obviously, what goes with socks? Shoes. Actually, it’s not really on Sara. I read the idiom about something being as “comfortable as an old shoe” somewhere this week and it stuck, oddly. This simile was once put “as easy as an old shoe,” and was first recorded in J. T. Brockett’s North Country Glossary (1825), so it’s stuck around for a while in the English language. So, it can’t be meaningless if it’s old, right? And, because lately I still find myself astounded that Himself and I have been married since we were twenty and twenty-one (THIRTY YEARS), the idea of being as “comfortable as an old shoe” also resonates – still kind of weird, but whatever, here we are.

Seven Ways of Looking at An Old Shoe.

I.
easy like thirty years of
Sunday strolls, this old shoe.

II.
is it
always congenial?
lost under
beds, wedged
into closets.
we trip
on the laces.
not always
a comfort:
an old shoe
will rub a
blister: but
a stubbed toe
hurts much less
with one.

III.
What is this title, ‘old?’
How can you be so cold
As to christen classic chic
With that label dull, and meek?
“Vintage,” “timeless,” “tried-and-true”
ALL sound better than “old shoe.”

IV.
From Monday two-step
to Friday buff-and-polish
love that old soft shoe

V.
if the old shoe fits
wear it

VI
a curving structure
bones, ligaments, and tendons
archly supported:
all that is needful, designed.
mama doesn’t want new shoes

VII
there was an old woman who loved her old shoe
it fit her wide foot in the toe box, too.
As perfect when worn out to paint the town red,
As it was worn staying in with a book instead.

Proving, once again, that a poem can be ABOUT ANYTHING. Stay tuned – I’m sure I’ll come up with something on socks next. ☺

Thank-you to Ms. Irene for rounding us up today. She’s also sharing about The Mistakes That Make Us, so do be sure to pop over there for more poetry magic. Meanwhile, more non-shoe ways of looking can be found with more poetry peeps. Liz’s poem is here. Sara’s poem is here. Tricia’s poem is here. Laura’s poem is here. Kelly’s poem is here. Michelle K’s poem and show news is here, Denise K’s precious poem celebrating Phoebe is here. Karen E’s looking at interruptions – welcome Karen!!! Buffy Silverman’s poem is here – welcome to the party, Buffy! And welcome to first-timer Tracy Kiff-Judson, whose poem is here. Linda M. is looking hilariously at middle age, and Linda B’s poem is here. Carol has chosen six ways to look at autumn, and Margaret is looking ten ways at a grandchild. THANK YOU, SO MUCH everyone for playing, and for Linda B. for inviting others. More poets = more fun. More ways of looking may be peered at throughout the day, and I’ll post the poems as I find them – stay tuned for the roundup!

I hope you take a look at your world this weekend and find the myriad tiny ways that – even in the midst of stress and strife – there is still growth, there is still life, there is still beauty, and peace. Hold tight to what is good. Happy Friday.