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!🌼
It’s hard to believe that you pulled this together at the last minute and *in the midst of unpacking*! Whaaaat? That’s incredible. I love this. Tackling it from opposite directions was brilliant. What does it mean to survive these days? It’s constant tension, a constant question, one which poetry is always poised to discuss.
Tanita, your double poem is an amazing piece of visual art and poetry despite having to move and not having enough time to have your conversation with Bishop evolve. But you accomplished what you needed to do in survival mode. There is so much to like about your poem. I honed in on the questions trying to think of how I would respond. Thanks for always giving me the impetus to try my skills as a #PoetryPal.
Oh, Tanita!! I have so much to say. First, this is the first month that I forgot about our overarching theme of conversation (although I guess we’re all in conversation with Bishop’s poem, so that counts.) But what you do here, in these two voices (and in color, no less) is so impactful — I’m blown away. I also really, really love the line you chose — it is the heart of the poem, I think. The real question at hand. This is really special… I’m off to read it again.
First, the red to purple to blue in your visual is genius. Your line works well at the end and the beginning. You really had to wrangle some words and ideas to make this work. The internal rhyme is terrific (wise, lies, harmonize). Like Sara, I looked at that line and thought, “Nope, not for me!”
Amazing job.
Maybe you should just have 12 hours… You pulled it off doubly well! I like the levity the rhyme provided but also your bite, lots to ponder here while we work on our survival. Wishing you some calm in the midst of your unpacking, thanks for the new-to-me Raccontino form too! Happy June to come
In my post today, I say that I couldn’t have chosen the line you did because I’d only come up with a vague mess, but I KNEW someone could do it, and you proved it—both coming AND going, in two poems. Your use of these forms visually and literally illustrates the opposite directions we as a country are championing– yanking and tugging and strangling ourselves in the process. We can do better. Your poem shows us.