Category: Musings on Extemporanea

Welcome to another year of Poetry Peeps Adventures!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our poetry challenge for the month of MARCH.

Here’s the scoop: we’re writing tight little bundles of poetry called Ovillejos! That’s exactly what the word means – a bundle of yarn. This Spanish form bundles together ten lines, made up of 3 rhyming couplets interspersed with three verrrry short lines, and a quatrain. The last line is a “redondilla,” a “little round” that collects all three of the short lines and casts off the poem, as it were. The Ovillejo plays with repetition in a way that will allow some cleverness and wordplay. I’m excited to dig into a new-to-me poetic form, first popularized sometime between the late fifteen hundreds by Miguel de Cervantes (he lived between 1547-1616 so it’s been a minute – may as well make it popular again) – and might even throw in a Spanish word or two, just to challenge myself. Are you in? Good! You’ll have the month to craft your creation and share it March 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. This form looks like fun, so we hope you’ll us!

“That’s one of the things poetry does,” Sze says. “We’re not writing in competition—we’re all trying to create poems, and they’re all shining light on each other.”

Thanks to Poetry Sister, Sara, who listened to a podcast and urged us towards this man, it has been our honor this month to learn a bit more about our newly appointed poet laureate, Arthur Sze. We all admitted to feeling a little awkward that we knew NOTHING about him. While the work of Tracy K. Smith, Joy Harjo, and Ada Limon, our previous three laureates, were already known to us, I know I came to Mr. Sze’s poetry only knowing that he is a translator whose early focus was translating classical Chinese poetry. Mr. Sze’s previous scholarship shows in his attention to words, his ability to both dial in and step back while retaining an immense focus on his subject, and his facility with using simple words to paint emotionally lush, immersive pictures. I really enjoyed reading his work. Finding a mentor poem of his wasn’t difficult – rather, narrowing his body of work down to just ONE was the issue.

Though this month was full of topics which easily lend themselves to poetry, I found that I didn’t quite know where to begin with Arthur Sze in conversation with any of these. It’s not that he doesn’t write about daily life in the world, but it’s more that he hyper-focuses on tiny bits of it that really wrest the ordinary from the daily. Subjects which reappear in his poetry come largely from the natural world – various leaves, lakes, celestial bodies – but he also has a fascination with hands. He repeatedly mentions X-rays. His poetry is stillness that moves, movement made meaning – impact and explosion, sting and spin – and always, grasping at understanding the internal through the lens of the external. Eventually I limited myself to the first few poems of his that I’d read and decided to try two forms – one, creating a Golden Shovel from an especially toothsome line, or two, trying to recreate relief and resignation using an ordinary life moment turned to metaphor and given substance as he so often does.

The first mentor poem I chose was about smoke. Living in the Western U.S., this was an easy choice; having had the experience of being downwind of fires in Canada or Alaska or Washington State – or even further north in my own state. The repetition of the first line and the phrase ‘days of smoke’ reflects the multiplicity of days we’ve endured this, and the final stanza resigns itself to knowing that we can’t slide back the moves on time’s Rubik’s Cube from yesterday – today requires a new solution.

Downwind

from Into the Hush by Arthur Sze,
Copper Canyon Press, 2025; *Winner of the 2025 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry for Lifetime Achievement*

When the air clears after days of smoke,
you yearn to swim in an alpine lake
that mirrors clouds and wash the scent
of burned pines from your hair;
from the west, smoke has traveled
a thousand miles, the point of ignition
where a pine snapped a transmission line.

When the air clears after days of smoke,
you notice the serrated edges along
apple leaves, locate a point of ignition
in a word, a jab: a man chalks
a cue stick and, slamming the white ball
into a pyramid of balls, feels for a millisecond
a point of ignition and surge in the clatter.

When the air clears after days of smoke,
you believe you were simply casualty
downwind, but, as you hold
a Rubik’s Cube of time in your hands,
the orange sunrise is nowhere,
everywhere, and—damn—that the pieces
are pieces you cannot flip back.

To find my own place with this poem, using Arthur Sze’s style as my mentor, I needed to use his deliberate, expansive phrasing, leaving room for my immediate meaning, and other weights of meanings a reader would bring to the piece. Each stanza needed to tell a story, complete within itself, of a moment or action. …And I needed to avoid rhyme like my life depended on it. (Guess which one of those was really trying.😖) In a nod to his translations, I threw in a couple of undemanding-to-non-speakers Spanish words.

At present, I find fire and its environmental impacts too grief-inducing, so I tried for a lighter direction. I chose a positive moment – small and internal – and then tried to use a less heavy hand in describing regret and resignation.

Updraft

When the sky clears after days of clouds,
you yearn down steep staircases
once known but long left unexplored
as whetted, curiosity bustles back up again –
And pausing, with winter no less present,
el clima’s daughter gestures to her brother.
el niño y la niña’s salsa spins scour the floor.

When the sky clears after days of clouds,
you notice that viridian is Gaia’s favorite shade,
followed familiarly by fern, or maybe sage.
exclamations of dun birds – sparrows? – are lime limned,
though faintly heard by the slow-sap forest;
evergreen rising, a point of departure,
draping the hills, a softening, moss-fuzzed mantilla.

When the sky clears after days of clouds,
you believe you feel potentiality’s
updraft, but as the acetic
wind curdles the clouds, vernal promises
of equinox diminish –
while hollow bellied thunder growls,
a ‘not yet’ that can’t be unheard.

I liked the word ‘updraft’ because, like ‘downwind,’ it is a minor thing that speaks to something huge. An updraft is a small, rapid, upward current of air, caused by wind rising from warmed ground, or forced over topography – and it’s the engine behind clouds, moisture formation, hail, and thunderstorms. It gently sends regrets as I think of spring, and plunges us back into yet another tormenta.

My final poem I wasn’t going to share, but I really found far too many neat turns of phrase in Sze’s work NOT to mess with my Shovel idea. “Winter Wishes” borrows from the poem, “X-Ray,” the first line of which reads In my mind, a lilac begins to leaf. I went again with a lighthearted approach, sticking to my theme of kind of not complaining about rain (nobody with any sense who lives in a drought-prone place does that), but merely suggesting that I’m really ready to start (very sloooowly) digging out the hillside for my garden if we could have a few days pause early next month? Yes, Dr. Nimbus, thank you.

Winter Wishes

on the store front, signs smile, “welcome In,”
while bagged soils, stacked, find my
fingers fidgeting. It’s TIME – past time, to my mind
though mind over matter can’t leave the land less a
lake. yesterday the first lilac
hyacinths raised bowed heads. Crowing, “Now it begins!”
I scrambled to the garden center, anxious to
find the finest fertilizer to fortify my be-leaf.

My Poetry Sisters are scintillating on the poetry of Arthur Sze from wildly different directions this month. Liz’s poem is here. Laura’s poem is here, Cousin Mary Lee’s is here, and Sara’s poem is here. Tricia’s poem is here, and Susan’s poem is here. Michelle K’s poem is here. More Peeps may show up throughout the weekend, so don’t forget to check back to see their links rounded up here.

Our lovely hostess this Poetry Friday is Ms. Margaret, at Reflections on the Teche, so don’t miss stopping by for more poetry! Thanks for hosting.

Book Giveaway! You have 31 days to win copies of BERRY PARKER DOESN’T CATCH CRUSHES. A book club, school library, or home school group is eligible to receive ten copies, which was published by Harper Collins in September of 2025, and is all about a young woman growing up and learning that love is not pie, and that sharing it out doesn’t require it to diminish. It’s a book about love and growing into change and compromise, through the lens of middle school. If you’re a book club host, or know a teacher or librarian who could use a boost this very long winter, don’t hesitate to sign up. Continental U.S. only, please, with apologies and acknowledgment of the murky tariff situation – may it clear soon.

We’re finally seeing the calendar and astronomical end of winter in a few weeks, though meteorological winter has yet to give way. In month two of this year, it seems we are already we’re in the stutter stop of weeks that extend years long, followed by days that just blink past. This was somehow the shortest Olympics, EVER, and yet, it’s been another endless month of this national moment. It’s so strange how time both shrinks and stretches, warps and morphs, all inchworms and seven-league boots. I longed as a child to be the magical ages of both seventeen and thirty-six (?? no idea), and then – life leapfrogged a decade and some, and now neither of those is even visible in my rear view anymore. Psychologists suggest that the more information the brain processes, the slower time seems to move, and as we age, much less seems like new information. When we’re kids, time moves like those deposit cans they used to send along through pneumatic tubes at the bank; a whoosh and the packet of our days is delivered elsewhere – grades and birthdays brought forward in a flash.

While we’re being both stretched and stationary, remember – b r e a t h e. On this ride, may you stop and look, cramming your moments with new faces, new textures, and new experiences, expanding the river of what you think you know down through its tiniest tributaries. May your brains have to slow down so that you can step deliberately into new understanding – giving depth and new dimension to knowledge you thought you’d already learned. And as you suck down cold, fresh mouthfuls of this spring to come, may you remember that no one will experience the new season just like you – so celebrate your original self because you are so well-loved.

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of September! Here’s the scoop: We’re going to take up the challenge of tritina. Invented by poet Marie Ponsot, this less restrictive younger sibling of the sestina uses three repeated words to end three tercets. The order of word-endings for the tercets are 123, 312, 231, with a final line acting as the envoi, featuring all three words in the 1-2-3 order used in the first stanza. Additionally, we’ll continuing with our theme of poetry in conversation, in whatever way that is individually defined. Sound a little tricky? Maybe? Are you still in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on September 26th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope all of you will join the fun!

It hardly seems possible that the harvest season is here and that summer is slouching towards completion. The choral season has kicked off, and we were greeted the first night of rehearsal with bushels of cherry tomatoes from someone’s out-of-control indeterminate plant. From our own wildly out of control mini-orchard, we have picked two tree’s worth of pears, and three tree’s worth of apples, most of the mulberries and we’re just getting started on the table grapes that are turning a deep purple. We’re feeling particularly grateful to family and friends and have not yet stooped to midnight produce deliveries to strangers… but we’re getting close. (THIS is why we don’t grow zucchini anymore…) I feel my Depression-Era grandma’s memory peering over my shoulder as I chop out the wormy bits and bag apples for the freezer. (Ninety-six cups and counting. 🫣) To be honest, I am grateful for both the bounty and for the distraction – it widens my focus from the continuing heaviness of grief in the world, and helps me gain a little bit of perspective. Seedtime and harvest persists, in spite of the destruction of so many other reliable cycles.

Processes continuing was on my mind this month. Having missed yet another gathering of the Poetry Princesses, I was determined to make up for the loss of writing in community by really leaning in to the poet herself. I read a few Giovanni poems before circling back to this one, more to hear her voice than anything else. Then, I listened to the poet read this poem aloud – from a video of the first season of HBO’s Def Comedy Jam from 2001.

Writing in conversation with a narrative poem is tricky. I found I wanted to imitate the poem more have a discussion with it, or with the poet. After reading the questions in the poem, I realized that Giovanni’s interrogation asked questions only human beings could answer. In essence, where are we taking poetry? Where has it been seen? Is it lost, and useless, as many people suspect (I admit to still being annoyed that the NPR Books newsletter a few weeks ago asked, “Whatever happened to poetry?” with apparently no irony intended)? Have we forgotten what gifts the arts have given us which have carried us through to this current moment? Was what carried us poetry? Does it have a place, in this blues-making world? What will allow poetry, stories, art in general – emotion expressed in imagery, allegory, rhyme, or meter – to persist?

I’m not generally a person who likes to write poems about poetry, but that seemed to be the assignment. Though there are many other things Giovanni could be talking about or addressing her words to, I chose to take her words literally and look at poetry across the table. I dislike talking about poetry in general because I try to avoid making direct and sweeping statements about arts. I have Opinions – so many – about what I like in poetry, what I think is overdone, and what is definitively not to my taste, nor ever will be. Nikki Giovanni seems to have had opinions throughout her career, too – but here, she works to subvert both readers’ expectations and possibly her own by writing to poetry as if it is both audience and speaker, confessor and consort, both the discarded art and the callous deserter. I attempted to mimic the poet’s confiding tone and close, fron-porch-conversational vibe:

Sing With Me, Poem

After Nikki Giovanni’s “Talk to Me, Poem. I Think I Got the Blues.”

Sing with me, Poem.
A solo just now
feels like spotlight
and stage fright.

Have you crooned loss and lament, Poem?
A lot of poems serenade on setbacks,
hum the hundred thousand hymns
of ‘alone’ and being left,
of the broken and bereft.

Hear how melody marks your trail –
constructing cairns rife with rhythm.
Stanza beckons scansion,
Employing unexpected enjambment, as
Pas-de-deux, couplets kiss,
Alliterating the way to bliss.

I know: blank verse is more respected.
Too much rhyme’s mostly rejected
(Think Dickinson and “Yellow Rose -”
Some only stan a poet who loves prose.)
But… who sings the tune without a beat?
Meter sans rhyme seems incomplete.

So, what’s next for you, Poem?
You’ve done American idyll,
Been burnished on plinths,
brayed from pulpits, and
laureled by laureates. Even my socials
Sing your songs on Instagrammed posts
passed along.

…can we sing with you, Poem?
Even if we don’t have the words?
What makes a song enough to be heard?

Despite what all else Giovanni’s poem asks, I find the real question is, what will make poetry persist? I think the answer is… WE WILL. And we’re already doing it, right here in this community. Liz’s persistence is here. Tricia’s poem is here, and Michelle poem is here. More Poetry Peeps might swing by with their creative conversations with Nikki Giovanni’s poem, and I’ll round ’em up here by the end of the weekend. Meanwhile, coffee aficionado and all-round lovely person Karen Edmisten – sharing her own delightful poetic conversation – is our Poetry Friday hostess today. “>Thanks, Karen!

There’s a lot of moving parts in this world, and a lot of feelings and thoughts about that to process. As long as there’s emotion in need of expression, there will be poetry. As long as there are people, there will be emotions, and words. As long as there are circumstances which delight, confuse, infuriate, grieve, and annoy us (with things like too many apples), there will be a poem to illuminate, celebrate, or merely to elucidate. In the meantime, don’t forget to wash your hands – the creeping crud is surging yet again. Hydrate. Dress your bed with gorgeous sheets. Call your youngest family member and horrify them with your use of ‘stan.’ Live a little. Love a lot. And remember, your current circumstances won’t last forever. In this and every moment, you are well-loved.

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of August! Here’s the scoop: If poetry is a love letter to readers, this month, we’re writing back. Using Nikki Giovanni’s “Talk to Me, Poem, I Think I Got The Blues” as a mentor verse, we’re writing poetry directly in conversation with a poem. Whether you talk back directly to Ms. Giovanni’s work, or choose another poems to pass notes to is up to you, as is length and form. Are you in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on August 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope all of you will join the fun!

That screech you just heard is your girl sliding in to Poetry Fridayland just under the wire. I’m grateful it’s Friday, but I much prefer to have time to write a poem and ponder over it. It’s a Poetry On The Fly type of day, following a week of life-on-the-fly which included missing the Poetry Sisters meet-up, so please to bear with my scattered and mildly inarticulate writing-the-poem-right-now thing. Ah, well – the point is the exercise, no?

In “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower” William Carlos Williams, after many meandering lines, finally takes one of his more wonderful poetic turns when he says, “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” The lack of “what is found there” is a breadth of unnameable, unknowable things, different for each person, but one specific thing that I know that people are dying from is from lacking understanding of how much the same we are. When we read poetry, we know that your experience and mine, though lived in different nations, under different stars, is the common stuff of humanity. (If politicians knew that and believed, surely they could legislate with mercy and justice, no?)

The Poetry Sisters’ “In Conversation” theme fits particularly well with the idea of shared human experiences communicated through poetry. I decided today’s Poetry Friday exercise would be to look very literally at the idea of it being difficult to get “the news” from poetry by looking at poetry through the lens of the news of the day. I tried to be very specific – the news needed to be from THE DAY – which for me meant the last twenty-four hours. There was quite a bit of local news that tempted me, but I chose a national story, one that is our latest national shame.

By now you’ll have heard of the latest executive order.

As a child, one of the next door neighbors worked with patient programs at a mental hospital. Petra didn’t talk about it much, until the state funding for the programs were cut under the 40th president when I was about nine or ten, and then we ALL heard about it. She was furious – and afraid of what would happen to the many, many people in need of care. That was my first experience of understanding that not every political decision was unanimous. Through her vociferous complaints I learned that there was no assumption of agreement just because everyone was an American.

Myriad people have myriad responses to the decisions made on behalf of Americans today. I put my responses in the form of sedokas, unrhymed poems made up of two three-line stanzas called katauta, because sedoka are comprised of a pair of katauta and each one may address the same subject from a different perspective. One of the most valuable things we can do is to see the news from multiple directions. This isn’t just an exercise in argument – the devil needs no advocates – but an extension of the idea of the commonality of experience. I used direct quotes from organizations and people quoted in news stories as the titles for these sedokas, and as a sort of date stamp of a particular bit of news from a particular point in time. I think this might actually be a difficult but satisfying National Poetry Month exercise – opening the paper (physical or digital), grabbing a headline or quotation, and writing sedoka that strive to experience the news from varying but complementary perspectives. Here are today’s efforts:

According to research from Charles Schwaub, 59% of
Americans are one paycheck from homelessness

I.

With walls closing in
exit raised hands and voices
this home is not a castle.

Flirt with disaster,
We sixty percent tease it
one wink away from homeless.

The UCSF Benioff Homeless and Housing Initiative reported in the LA Times that “contrary to common perception, only about 37% of homeless people were using illicit drugs regularly, and 25% said they had never used drugs. But drug use is far more prevalent among homeless people than in the general population. Just over 65% reported having regularly used at some point in their lives, and 27% had started after becoming homeless.”

II.
does it quiet them,
silence blame and confusion?
soften the teeth of the trap?

slumped on the sidewalk
we creep past with hesitance
perspective renders us mute.

“The National Homelessness Law Center strongly condemns today’s executive order, which deprives people of their basic rights and makes it harder to solve homelessness. …This order does nothing to lower the cost of housing or help people make ends meet. The safest communities are those with the most housing and resources, not those that make it a crime to be poor or sick. Forced treatment is unethical, ineffective, and illegal.” (WASHINGTON, D.C – July 24th, 2025)

III.
We teach kids consent,
to ask, to wait. Not assume
my way is the only way.

I do not consent
to terminating consent
To chaining our civil rights.

I’m eager to see what my participating Poetry Sisters and everyone else came up with this month. Tricia’s post is here. Mary Lee’s book review plus poem is right here. Michelle’s sedoka is here. Diane’s sun-positive sedoka is here. More Poetry Peeps might swing by with their sedoka and I’ll round ’em up here by the end of the weekend. Meanwhile, Marci is our Poetry Friday hostess today, and is probably far more organized than anyone around here, even with just getting back from a fabulous-looking writing retreat. Thanks, Marci!

There’s a lot more news to consider, but there’s also a time to close the paper, and go outside. Don’t forget to appreciate the things that you are fighting to preserve. Touch grass. Hydrate. Reach out to friends. And remember, you are loved.