Category: Seven Sisters

{pf: poetry peeps are desperately seeking sedokas}

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July 25, 2025

1:00 pm

8 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps are desperately seeking sedokas}

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

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?

From Process…

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.

…To Poetry

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.

{pf: a summer swap surprise and the community is the point}

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July 3, 2025

4:53 am

11 Comments on {pf: a summer swap surprise and the community is the point}

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

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! Just a reminder that our challenge for the month of July is… the Sedoka. You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on July 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope all of you will join the fun!

These last several weeks have been a bad combination of crazy busy and deeply fatigued as we’ve packed, moved, unpacked, and proceeded to do the summer hustle of enjoying visitors in between catching up on appointments. I knew with as much as I have going on that I wouldn’t have time to really make a good effort with the Summer Swap this season, so I bowed out of participating. Imagine my astonishment to receive – on the same day, no less – two poems from Poetry Friday stalwarts who nourished me with images and words of beauty and certainty. Linda Mitchell and Rose Cappelli gave me a spark of life this week, and I am deeply grateful. Muchísimas gracias, poets.

You can click on the image to enlarge it and see Linda’s handwritten invitation for me to ‘Begin Here,’ which was wrapped around a beautiful poem based on a Joy Harjo title (that woman has the best titles for her poetry collections!), and gaze greedily at the lacy water from the glorious fountains at Longwood Gardens, a place I clearly need to go and spend a whole week someday. (I think the postman read Rose’s poem as well, as he took an extra moment with her card before slipping it into our box. Poetry on postcards is a win for the world.)

From Process…

I especially needed the kick in the bum Linda’s ‘junque’ journal provided (I cannot use her word, ‘junk,’ with any seriousness, even knowing this journals is made of bits and bobs from weeded library books, unused student notebook paper and prompt pages from the On Being summer project), because poetry in a time of busyness is hard, but poetry in a time of shrinking – and flinching – is nearly impossible.

When I was a child, I used to jump when the teacher raised her voice at other children. I cringed when my siblings were disciplined – or, let’s be real, punished. I don’t do well with… unkindness, and right now, there is just. so. much. I’ve been flinching like a dog recoiling from fireworks every time I read the news or hear a Morning Edition on NPR for weeks now. What did Adam Serwer tell us in 2018? The cruelty is the point… and it grinds down my soul like a cheese grater. When I read the first prompt from Krista Tippet, asking what brought me despair and what brought me hope, I could answer at least half of the question reflexively.

I was privileged to do a poetry exercise with the exceptional poet-teacher Michelle Schaub the other day, focusing on figurative language and metaphors. Using Quilts by Nikki Giovanni as a mentor poem, we discussed the effect of the metaphor in comparison, but also in contrast. Once I decided to use an extended metaphor in this week’s poem, I knew I needed to figure out ways to shed light on opposite themes. If hope is a thing with feathers, then what thing is it not? If what is filling me with despair is cruelty, what is giving me hope? I was stuck on that hope bit for an annoyingly long time.

…to Poetry

Rereading the beginning of the Atlantic piece gave me an inkling. It’s in the rather grisly beginning, where Serwer recounts what he calls the “catalog of cruelty” found at The Museum of African-American History and Culture through photographs, not so much of the deaths of African Americans, but the unhinged, grinning glee of their murderers. He writes, “Their names have mostly been lost to time. But these grinning men were someone’s brother, son, husband, father. They were human beings, people who took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death—and were so proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork, jostling to ensure they caught the eye of the lens, so that the world would know they’d been there. Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another.” Et voila. What gives me hope, and what has always given me hope as an adult with still such an incomplete understanding of the word, is community. That gathering around and embracing of a shared ideology. That source of collaboration, assistance, understanding, camaraderie. That thing which, for much of my younger years was simply an abstract, but which, as I have stepped away from the rigid isolation I grew up in, I’m beginning to find the shape of… Community is what both the cruel and the compassionate are seeking.

The community didn’t make it very far into today’s poem except in the envoi. Cousin Mary Lee’s fourth of July poetry prompt seemed to me to be for protest and resistance, not necessarily collaboration and coming together. I’ll circle back to this another day, but for now, this is a day for history to remind us of a two-fold truth: this IS who some of us are, and who some of us want to be – and the rest of us who don’t want this? Will reach out to their neighbors, circle up the wagons, and resist.

4TH OF JULY 2025

Looking back, THE
history books will show
how, six months in, CRUELTY
has not plateaued.
My country as it IS
I do not know.
We once fought hate, we THE
shield of small and slow.
But now, axe sharpened to a POINT
The fascist thinks to deal out a death blow.

Though cruelty is some people’s way of life
Together we are strong, even through strife.

Whether or not you protest or party today, know that the tiny thread of connection in all people is our need for community. What are the ways that you can gather in strength and strengthen others? What are the ways that you in particular can use a passion or a skill particular to you to pour oil, bind wounds, or strengthen the courage of your community? I know I’ll be thinking of the answer to those questions myself this Fourth. If you’d like to continue to think in nuanced ways about this complicated and confusing country we call home, and read more poetry of protest and praise on its birthday, head over to A(nother) Year of Reading, and thanks, Mary Lee for hosting.

Be well, friends, and do good.

{come for the poetry friday roundup! stay for the peeps wrestling the raccontino!}

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June 26, 2025

1:00 pm

19 Comments on {come for the poetry friday roundup! stay for the peeps wrestling the raccontino!}

Musings on Extemporanea, On Writing, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of July! Here’s the scoop: We’ll going to write brief poems called Sedokas. A Sedoka is an unrhymed poem made up of two three-line katauta with a 5/7/7, 5/7/7 syllable count. Since a Sedoka has only six lines, you can totally do this! Of course, we’re continuing our theme of being ‘in conversation,’ next month as well (and since Mary Lee has invited us to join her at A(nother) Year of Reading for protest Poetry on Independence Day next Friday, this might be a great short form to use for that!). Are you in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on July 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope all of you will join the fun!

Whew – just like that, summer has come in, and wow is it trying to redefine the definition of “heat” in much of the United States. To those of you prostrated before your AC and fans, we see you. Normally it’s California sweltering with no mercy, but so far this year we’ve had a really slow beginning to the more vicious heat – which leads us to believe we’ll be in steaming puddles by August, but let’s kick that can of sweat down the road, shall we?

Meanwhile, THIS is the place for Poetry Friday links!

Click, Friend, And Enter


Can I take a moment to revisit my Poetry Peeps invitation for last month and snicker? I wrote, “We’ll going to write a couple of couplets and make a Raccontino. Never heard of the form? No worries. If you can count to two, you can play with this delightful form.” Can anyone tell I’d forgotten that I’d struggled with writing a Raccontino before? The Poetry Sisters did, in fact, attempt them before. In 2015 I bleated, “This raccontino stuff is BLOODY DIFFICULT.” …Heh. So much for the ‘delightful form,’ huh? And yet: while it’s definitely complicated, this time around, it hasn’t been that bad.

From Process…

In Italian, a raccontino is a narrator or storyteller, so it stands to reason that the Raccontino form tells a story. From the title, which some poets compose as part of or an entire sentence, to the couplets, to the end words of the odd-numbered lines, each element tells a small story that braids together into a whole. I came back to this frequently.

When we gathered for our drafting session, the Poetry Sisters recalled our previous processes. Last time I tried this, I tried writing the odd-numbered end line phrase first, the even-line rhyme scheme second, and the title/rest of the poem after that. That worked for most people, except I could only think of long quotes/sentences for my end-line story, so ended up with ten thousand couplets. (I started over a lot, and whined a lot more.) We got a giggle remembering how last time Sara jiggered the end lines only after writing the poem – yet somehow made that chaos work into a beautiful, heartfelt piece. Those who can throw down with chaos do, I guess!?

…to Poetry

This time around, I started with a handful of end-line quotations to use, but some of them were a little too close to the bone, and I abandoned the very first poem I wrote mid-word. What is it about poetry that sometimes leads it to be …well, too true? Anyway, I turned to my back-up phrases and hoped they were a bit more generic. The title of the first one I got through was based on something my little sister said, and the rest is realism based on a comment about ability/mobility and arthritis from another poet in our circle. I liked how they came together.

Because a Raccontino calls for only one rhyming application, as I wrote that second poem, I found myself struggling with the meter. I could write a …decent enough collection of words within the boundaries of the rules, but I spent a lot of time cherry-picking and fussing, trying to find a flow. I gave it up as “good enough” when somehow, a third poem just… suggested itself. I came up with it because I went back to reread my 2015 post and words in conversation with the concept of “it’s a jungle out there,” arrived from the title of my first poem. (And, hand to God, as my friend L says, I didn’t even realize that the first part of the end-line words, “Undeclared, this war rages on, grab hands, stay close” were written in reference to the 2015 undeclared war against ISIS in Iran and Syria until I was writing this right now. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, non? God save us from ourselves.) Because it’s a jungle out there, we need to live with honest hearts and true, and keep each other close… still holding hands before we jump, which I unthinkingly reechoed from the past. Just for fun, I’ll share both finished poems, but the last is definitely today’s winner for me.

I’m Not Lazy, I’m In Power Saving Mode

We ran full-tilt, but now we take it SLOW –
(Our changing bodies outside our control.)

We hustled once, but forced, we’re slowing DOWN,
Extending Pain-Free days is now the goal.

It’s galling when the doctor croons, “Hey, YOU,”
And lays out reasons, with her words cajoles,

Assigning PT. We relearn to MOVE:
(Make no mistake, pain’s jail without parole.)

Our choices going… gone – Have yours gone TOO?
Does freewill feel like what your body stole?

We whine, but truth to tell, life changes FAST
Who knows – someday we might again feel whole.

♦

This chronic pain crap may leave you downcast.
But keep the faith: Life’s mysteries are vast.

You’ll notice I’ve included a little envoi as if this were a sonnet. I don’t know – somehow today it felt like envoi were necessary? Additionally, the image is of the Bay Bridge in SF – not the well-known and fancily painted Golden Gate, but the plain old Bay Bridge which carries much of the common daily commuter traffic – not the 59th Street Bridge, but probably as pedestrian for people just getting to work or cycling across one bit of water to get somewhere else. Maybe the drivers are not yet feeling groovy, but having the potential for it…I like that link to joy in the ordinary.

Other Raccontino wrestlers are perhaps feeling pretty groovy or reveling in the ordinary as they share their forays into this form. I got a tiny preview Sunday and know that Tricia’s efficiently composed poem is here. Sara probably chose more chaos here, Mary Lee – always prepared – is here. Laura’s short and to the point is here, and we can’t wait to see what Liz has done. Karen rose to the challenge and wrestled her Raccontino here. Michelle K’s poem has punch, and we have a newcomer – let’s welcome Diane and her Raccontino to the Peep Squad. Margaret’s poem is here, and Carol V’s lovely poetry-filled post is here. More Poetry Peeps might swing by with their Raccontinos (Raccontini?) and I’ll round ’em up here by the end of the weekend.

Life, Improvised

So, how does it start? You, what, simply hold
Your heart on your sleeve and hang it out there
To sweat in the spotlight – your fate in its hands?
Sounds awful! Exposed! Most people’s nightmare.
A big life says, “Yes.” Acceptance adds, “And?”
An honest life asks that you lay yourself bare.
Why skulk in the shadows when courage cries, Jump!’
Living your truth means that you build wings midair.

Freefall has its benefits — and by and by
You’ll forget about falling. You’ll have learned to fly.

My nephew graduated from high school nine days ago, and turned eighteen seven days ago, so the imagery of jumping into life – nervous, but holding hands – improvising, and learning to fly is definitely on my mind. The younger set remind us we all need a little help to get aloft – our neighbors, our chosen family and friends, and the community we need to keep close, now more than ever as the clouds close in. Elf’s fledgling flight might be a ragged one, with a bit of frantic flapping and barely missing crashing into windows at first, but if he falls, I’m counting on the rest of us to raise him up and run until he finds the wind again – into whatever extraordinary life is allotted to him. Whatever your age, may your circle do the same for you. May we never discount the power of community.

Look for the interconnected stories you’re telling, or have been told, and see where your narrative intersects. Remember that Yes. and And? are invitations to acceptance and connection. Know how well you are loved – and may it fuel you to love in return.

Happy weekend. Be well and do good.

{pf: p7 shovel gold with Elizabeth Bishop}

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May 30, 2025

4:24 am

6 Comments on {pf: p7 shovel gold with Elizabeth Bishop}

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

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of June! Here’s the scoop: We’ll going to write a couple of couplets and make a Raccontino. Never heard of the form? No worries. If you can count to two, you can play with this delightful form. Of course, we’re turning our faces to the winds of ‘conversation,’ as always. Are you in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on June 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope you’ll join the fun!

In leagues worth of understatement, it’s been a HELLUVA month. As of this post we’ve been in our new house for a week and three days, and we’re 97% unboxed. Now we’re back to the stupid phase of any packing/unpacking expedition wherein you want to shriek and fling your possessions into the street just so you can be DONE, but I’m hanging on, faithfully sorting and deciding what we no longer need – something it would have made sense to do on the other end, but that only works if all parties packing have the same idea. Sometimes… it’s just easier to do these things when one has a quiet moment. Ahem. So! Chaos abounds, which is why I realized that a.) it was the end of the month and b.) the last Friday of the month exactly twelve hours before this post. Oops! And yes, that means the entire crew missed our Sunday meet-up last week… but honestly? Summer: it happens.

From Process…

Oh, it’ll be fine, I told myself. A golden shovel is a very forgiving poetic form. Well, yes… and no. I knew my topic almost immediately, since we were using Elizabeth Bishop’s “Letter to NY” for our mentor poem – I knew I wanted to write a letter to someone, be in conversation with someone or something unusual – but a letter to my erstwhile sanity seemed just slightly on the nose, and a little too narrow of a topic (though I truly could go on and on about it). And yet, moving house: all there IS is chaos, and lacking sanity. However, it also occurs that it’s been chaotic nationally for a …while now….and getting louder. But could I pull any of that from the mentor poem and use it in a meaningful way?


…to Poetry

I decided to delve into writing a golden shovel from opposite directions. Much like the opposing voices within our national conversation, there are very loud opinions of who is doing what correctly, and why, and I wanted this chaotic letter to reflect two ways of looking at a single idea, like survival – something that is both nebulous and distinctly individualized. What does it mean to live your ‘best life’ in the midst of chaos? Is there a way to do that? What’s your best route to safety – or is living your best life not bound up in safety? With these thoughts in mind, I began to compose – keeping in mind that I truly did not have time to make a lot of rhyme, but trying to give a nod to internal rhyme anyway.

A Letter From Our Collective Consciences

Every exchange seems somehow the same, WHERE
Ant-like, we follow and wave around words. ARE
antennas An offer? So strained are the smiles YOU
So shallowly proffer. A nose-to-tail following, GOING
Unknowing. Direction? Who questions? We walk, AND
Keep pace; a silent compliance surely keeps us safe. So WHAT
If the naysayers still shake their heads? We all ARE
Who we are, and ‘safe’ is the stock in the soup YOU
are brewing. Survival’s the goal. It’s what we’re all DOING.
***
WHAT living teaches still won’t make us wise.
(ARE expectations urging us wrong?)
YOU know in your heart the world will tell lies – that
DOING and saying don’t much harmonize…That a song
AND a singer aren’t the selfsame thing… Knew
WHERE the lies was, yet it somehow still stings.
(ARE our instincts sending common sense askew?)
YOU just survive this life as best you may –
GOING your own way seems the only way.

These are definitely in conversation, yet not as much in opposition as I had imagined when I first began, perhaps. Survival is a topic which elicits similar emotional investment, and sometimes, we end up more closely aligned in heart than we expected to… In any event, I’m happily joined in this golden shovel challenge by my fellow Poetry Sisters, who are very likely much better diggers than I. Laura’s poem is here. Tricia’s poem is here, and Sara’s poem is here. Liz’s poem is here, and early bird Michelle K’s poem is here. Other Poetry Peeps may pop in throughout the weekend to take part in this challenge, so stay tuned for the round up; I’ll post ’em as I find ’em. Additionally, Poetry Friday is ably hostessed today by the one and only Karen Edmisten, whose shockingly cleverly named blog makes me smirk every time. Thanks, K – may your coffee stay hot and your mornings be energized.

If chaos and survival are on your mind this month, don’t forget to take naps, touch grass, drink water and remember to hug a friend. Your mental health will thank you, and more than that, it will remind you that we’re all just trying to survive, and to perhaps be kinder than you want to, when you encounter someone whose world worldview runs counter to your own. Courage, friends!🌼

{npm kidlit progressive poem}

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April 21, 2025

9:42 am

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General Coolness, NPM, Part and Poetry, Seven Sisters, Sleeper Stories, Small Fictions

It’s time! The lovely progressive poem has “progressed” for twenty days, and now it’s my turn! Here’s the panoply of poets playing this year:

April 1 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 2 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 3 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Denise at https://mrsdkrebs.edublogs.org/
April 6 Buffy at http://www.buffysilverman.com/blog
April 7 Jone at https://www.jonerushmacculloch.com/
April 8 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 9 Tabatha at https://tabathayeatts.blogspot.com/
April 10 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 11 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities | Rose’s Blog
April 12 Fran Haley at Lit Bits and Pieces
April 13 Cathy Stenquist
April 14 Janet Fagel at Mainly Write
April 15 Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink
April 16 Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm
April 17 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 18 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 19 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
April 20 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 21 Tanita at {fiction instead of lies}
April 22 *Patricia Franz
April 23 *Ruth at There’s No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
April 24 Linda Kulp Trout at http://lindakulptrout.blogspot.com
April 25 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
April 26 Michelle Kogan at: https://moreart4all.wordpress.com/
April 27 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 28 Pamela Ross at Words in Flight
April 29 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 30 April Halprin Wayland at Teaching Authors

(EDITED TO ADD – tomorrow’s line will be found at Rose’s blog, and the poem will go forward from there. Please skip Patricia for now. Thank you!)

For those of you new to the process: this NPM children’s poetry celebration was originally begun by Irene Latham, and the mantle taken up by Margaret Simon, who wrangled this year’s distracted poets into a cohesive whole. Linda M. started us off with a gloriously open April window…

From Process…to Poetry (Line)

April thus far has been a particularly scattered month for me, but reading poetry has been particularly grounding, especially seeing this poem grow in creation. In this April garden, nothing yet has come to grief. It is full of the actions of joy. As I breathed the “gift of the lilacs,” and imagined myself painting and breathing and dabbling and gamboling, I thought about what we verb-y activities we haven’t yet done in this poem – eaten, spoken, shouted, screamed/squealed, or slept (we’re playing in this garden alone, which is its own kind of delightful). I also meditated on the scents on my back porch just now of an evening – orange blossoms from my dwarf citrus tree. It almost feels like we opened that April window into a glorious morning, and now… taking my cue from the thanks at the “day’s end,” and “long-ago springs,” as well as Cousin Mary Lee’s flowering shrubs, I decided to forget about eating (I couldn’t figure out how to fit it in 😂) and drink in a sense of peace and rest. That’s what this April garden has given to me this month. Since we’ve stayed in four lines per stanza, I’ll add an ellipse and begin a new one…and then it’s over to you, Patricia Rose!

Open an April window
let sunlight paint the air
stippling every dogwood
dappling daffodils with flair

Race to the garden
where woodpeckers drum
as hummingbirds thrum
in the blossoming Sweetgum

Sing as you set up the easels
dabble in the paints
echo the colors of lilac and phlox
commune without constraints

Breathe deeply the gifts of lilacs
rejoice in earth’s sweet offerings
feel renewed-give thanks at day’s end
remember long-ago springs

Bask in a royal spring meadow
romp like a golden-doodle pup!
startle the sleeping grasshoppers
delight in each flowering shrub…

Drinking in orange-blossom twilight

{npm♦4/21}

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April 21, 2025

9:40 am

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NPM, Part and Poetry, Seven Sisters, Sleeper Stories

At each head-shaking headline, I wonder where these people came from.

The verb ‘graft’ is a word that means ‘corruption,’ and comes from an earlier English word for a ditch, a moat or ‘a digging.’ By 1906, in American English, it was used in the noun form and by 1915, the verb, adding weight to the already extant phrase “confidence trickster.” A grifter was a chiefly a liar, a conniver, a person involved in the graft and corruption of another, which was a low activity for lowlifes, as low as a ditch, or a moat, or a digging. We’re watching, and history is recording, how such low lives are lived, low and digging lower, together in their muck…

nota bene

Grifter,
Like calls to like:
As magnets call iron
Like waste attracts flies, fools gather
To you.


{npm♦4/18-4/20}

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April 20, 2025

5:05 pm

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NPM, Part and Poetry, Seven Sisters

meditation

And blesséd are you
Embracing this blue marble
And held in return

Not every action will serve. Not every protest will move the needle. Some of us will send money. Some of us will walk empty through our days, heartbroken. Some of us only know rage. Some don’t know how to say that we were wrong, but all of us are here now. In a foreign place where we’ve never stood before, looking at each other, perhaps for the first time, we are here. Recognizing our neighbors. Watching those who run to the battle, who carry water, whose compass has always pointed to the front lines. Some of us can only watch them go, too weary or scared or ill or jaded or wounded to go with them. And some of us have only just now seen that this is all of our fight.

Blessed are you, too.

While it is yet dark,
Disbelieving miracles
Blesséd are you, too
    still drawing back the curtains
    prayerful that the sun will rise.

{npm♦pf – 4/4}

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April 4, 2025

4:13 pm

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

Tricia is raising the bar this month, revisiting her “try-random-poetry-form” posts for NPM. She shared the Venn Diagram poem today for Poetry Friday and it is BRILLIANT. Having committed to reflecting on lines from Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Gate A-4” this month, I immediately knew I had try this new form with one of my phrases.

From Process…

Of course, Tricia didn’t tell me this was going to be so HARD. I didn’t think it would be – it’s basically two Golden Shovels back to back, with the mentor poem phrase in the middle of the overlapping circles so that it both ends and begins two poems or poem stanzas. I don’t know why this took me forever to get my brain around, but – wow. Three hours to get eight lines is kind of ridiculous, but I am trying to go with the spirit of the phrase as well – so the lines needed to end with the idea that not everything is lost.

…To Poetry

TBH, that is DAILY the thing that takes the most time with these poems.

I refuse to be cheesy and write sermon illustrations that are sunny and cheery and essentially meaningless. I refuse to do the “it gets better” thing with such a great woman’s work – I don’t want to write Chicken Soup for the Beleaguered American’s Soul type of crap that says the sun will come out tomorrow and everything will be fine. Damage – so, so much damage – is being done, not just to institutions and systems, but to people. Much like the immigrant children separated from their parents the last time this administration’s brutality was left unchecked, some things will never be repaired. I grieve that as any person of morals and sense does. It will not be “fine,” but it will be…well, in the Julian of Norwich sense of wellness. Things are chaotic, and we’re brokenhearted, but all manner of things will be well – because we are still here. The grievously ill body politic may not recover, but God is still here. And, we are not done working to save PEOPLE yet.

*Ahem.* Anyway – off my soapbox, here’s the poem.

All Shall Be Well

It hurts – how can it not?
We assumed that The Dream was everything.
But found how fleeting a daydream is.
A handful of bubbles, captured, then lost.

Not by might do the best dreams come,
Everything will not yield to the bark of the gun.
Is our land solely gold-makes-rules thugs and no more?
Lost Dream, steel our spines. We know what we stand for.


{national poetry month: “not everything is lost”}

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March 31, 2025

12:05 pm

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Mental Health, NPM, Part and Poetry, Seven Sisters, What We Do, Who We Are

“This / is the world I want to live in. The shared world.”

The 2025 NPM poster features lines from “Gate A-4”, a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, as well as artwork by New York Times-bestselling author and illustrator Christy Mandin. “Gate A-4” is a poem which has always resonated – because I used to love the swirl of humanity in airports, all the people-watching and the excitement of going. This was, of course, when I was in my twenties and still new to air travel, still believing in the public transportation contract of paying-to-ride, before a world where people beat a man and dragged him off a plane because they’d overbooked and wanted his seat for someone else. Post 2001, I saw air travel’s underbelly – a world wherein adults sometimes wept silently, frightened, frustrated by a language barrier and exiled from all they knew. I had the …experience of flying aboard a USAID flight where I put on the seat belts of other adults and a woman with a tiny infant because the flight attendant talked at them – and there was no translator. It was literally – for it was a flight out of Miami – a steaming hot mess. A toilets backed-up-and-overflowing – people airsick and vomiting – no AC on the whole flight – grit-your-teeth-and-endure hot mess, from Miami to Minnesota. I prayed those people found a home where they could be clean and fed and free of the wailing bewilderment they seemed mired in that day.

Suffice it to say I can almost feel the frustration of the gate attendant, the wary, xenophobic cringing of the other passengers at all that… foreign emotion, and the bleak despair of the woman on the floor wailing. Naomi Shihab Nye’s act of mercy and humanity made so many people’s lives better in that two hour wait for the next flight, but it is the final lines of the poem, rather than the two that the American Academy of Poets highlighted for this month that make me tear up and hold my breath: “This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”

Those last two sentences always make me want to whisper, “Really? Do you promise?”

Yes. Not everything is lost: because everyone who is loved is found.

Not everything is lost: because we have it within us to be maps.

Not everything is lost: because not everything we lose is a loss.

Not everything is lost: because we can find beauty and meaning in remnants.

I don’t know what’s going to come out of me for National Poetry Month, but I will be in conversation with this, and have settled on this as my theme – and my hope. “This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”

“Not everything is lost.” It’s true. It’s got to be true. Not everything, not all the time – and we will find ourselves again.

{pf: poetry peeps pass notes to superman}

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March 27, 2025

11:30 pm

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Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters, Sleeper Stories, What We Do, Who We Are

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of April! Here’s the scoop: We’ll be in conversation with a vintage, antique, or just plain old photograph. Of course, your photograph needn’t be from either of these archival photography sites, but take a poke around, and see what you find. Your poem should be based on an image which is at least, say, forty years old, or at least something you consider “old.” Once you’ve got your image nailed down, you’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on April 25th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope you’ll join the fun!

When we chose these poems to be in conversation with, I was excited – because the poems were offbeat and a bit amusing, and I thought this would be easy.

Literally EVERY TIME I THINK THAT I should snap my wrist with a rubber band or something. Writing poetry is never a slam dunk when I think it’s going to be. Never. Ever. Why do I keep deluding myself this way???

From Process…

Clifton’s “four notes to Clark Kent” addresses the idea of a rescuer through varying personal lenses. Though she is still writing to him, Lucille Clifton seems to have misgivings about the dude who can leap tall buildings in a single bound… I mean, what good is that, her first poem seems to ask, when she’s dealing with more immediate issues between the four walls of her home? Who can save her from all of the broken dreams and emotional paucity that waits there, him? No – she doesn’t think so. She names him “tourist;” reminding the reader that he’s not from Metropolis – he’s a stranger, a literal alien. While she’s hanging by her fingernails from the edge of a ledge, waiting for rescue, he’s just visiting, isn’t he? Maybe he’s not really there to save her after all. While in her third poem, she appears to forgive him – and forgive herself – for just human and other. The idea of the Superman mythos has inflated him past life-sized and she graciously allows him to shrink. By her fourth poem, she openly decides he’s pretty hot, but I still don’t get the idea that the poet feels he’s all that super – just cute. She calls him by his Clark Kent moniker, referencing his other persona solely as an adjective rather than a name, which I found interesting.

I shared some of Clifton’s misgivings about Mr. “faster than a speeding bullet.” I didn’t grow up on Superman comic books, and the blandly handsome, lantern-jawed superhero in the movies didn’t particularly …convince me, as a kid. As a fellow four-eyes, I was completely OVER the trope of “dreamboat without his glasses,” and thought Clark and Superman looked exactly alike – because they WERE, of course.🙄 Further, his mild-mannered, awkward persona grated on my nerves (I somehow missed the point that he was acting so people wouldn’t equate him with his outgoing alter ego). He was noble to the point of ridiculousness, and I didn’t resonate with him as an American icon. Like Smokey the Bear, he somehow seemed to be just another childhood talking head in cartoon form who told you how to behave. He never seemed particularly heroic to me, so I realized that Clifton’s doubting had infected me, too. Who was this guy who was supposed to save us? And who were we, just …sitting there, waiting to be saved?

…to Poem

When we got together for our Sunday poetry chat, Cousin Mary Lee said she couldn’t find a lighthearted bone in her body and didn’t feel like she could speak to the poem. At which point I thought, “Oh, humor was an option!?” I didn’t have any lighthearted thoughts on Superman either. In my initial draft I had taken a deep dive into the idea of saviors, the idea of Americans exceptionalism, of Americans striding in to play savior – after like as not having started the conflict. I wrote about the learned helplessness of people who have lived with privilege for so long that they don’t ever think anything can happen to them, and about the non-SUPER-ness of people who stop voting and such. *cough* The poem was taking me somewhere I didn’t want to go, so I thought I’d sit down and try being funny – just – out of nowhere. I wanted to write about the really cheesy 80’s Superman movies I didn’t watch until decades later (they DID NOT age well). I wanted to write about Spanx underpants over spandex leggings and capes (“No capes!” screams Edna Mode in my brain) and battling wedgies while leaping over tall buildings in a single bound. I did NOT, however – I restrained myself! Sara probably did too. Tricia definitely wrote something classier, as did Laura. Mary Lee’s poem is here, and here’s Liz’s poem, Michelle K’s poem is here. More Peeps may be checking in throughout the day, so don’t miss the whole Clark Kent roundup. And for more poetry that fortunately doesn’t have anything to do with spandex and capes, visit the Poetry Friday round-up Marcie Flinchum Atkins’ blog. Thanks for hosting today, Marci.

While I didn’t write about wedgies, I did try to write amusingly, so… I thought about Lois Lane, who tried so hard to be cool about Superman, but… she just was not.

Notes Passed To Lois Lane (Probably by her editor, Perry White)

A bird, a plane – wait, what?
This SUPERficial scrawl
Is not your best reporting, Lo,
This needs an overhaul.

He’s SUPERMAN, he…does!
From dawn ’til dusk he slays
the dangers to Metropolis
that threaten disarray –

We stan a Man of Steel
God knows I respect hustle…
Just… write less on forehead curls
And shoulders bunched with muscle…

Okay, okay, I know and YOU know that Lois Lane Would Never, she was a thorough-going professional. But it still made me smile.

I’ll be honest – I couldn’t salvage this other poem. The ‘serious’ one was plunging down a lot of rabbit holes I don’t have the energy to follow, so I sort of tried to pull back on some of the over-emoting, and left it where it lay. Reminding myself that this poem is in conversation with the others is what helped me stay more on track — and while this doesn’t yet say what I need it to, it’s a start. If nothing else, I do believe that if we don’t hang together, we’re all going to hang separately, and despite my little red hats, I mean that across aisles and political divides. This is bigger than the red v. blue v. green color war, I’m afraid.

Notes In The Margin of The Daily Republic

Not any man would do, we’ll want SUPERman:
SUPERlative – from cape to brawny chest.
Spotlighting our best selves, and our SUPER land,
Our destiny to be forever blessed.
Granite jaw and steady stare – he’s sensational.
SUPERbly snaring manhood in his trap
With orphan-makes-good tropes. He’s educational
He models how to rise on our bootstraps…
…
Why an alien would show up when we’re losing,
To fight the thugs Metropolis can’t stop
No one ever seems to ask. It IS confusing
…The comics show folks screaming “Help!” nonstop,
And the victims standing, looking ’round for saviors,
Wringing hands instead of maybe calling cops…?

In MY book I’ve inserted on page borders,
Small hands cupped ’round a tiny screaming face
Which shouts, “People! Don’t just stand and wait for orders!”
In YOUR Daily Republic – your birthplace!
For future’s sake, speak up – protect what matters
Resist and rail against the treasonous.
One rock is small – a rock slide buildings shatter…
Join hands. We’ll be the ones to rescue us.

I’ll be ready Poetry Friday notes from a short beach glass hunting sabbatical, but I’ll definitely get around to answering any messages. I hope you take – and are taking – some time away to get outside and witness this slow turning of the seasons, as the earth wakes and stretches toward the possibility enshrined in Spring. Turn off the noise for a while, and just be – and then breathe. I plan to not just touch grass but touch rocks, possibly newts and beetles. (Anything squishier may require gloves.) While it’s true that no one is coming to save us, with any luck, and a bit of cooperation, there’s still enough to save of ourselves. Happy Weekend.