{pf: npm♦4/25 & the poetry peeps have ekphrastic exchanges}

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of May! Here’s the scoop: We’ll be in conversation with Elizabeth Bishop’s “Letter to N.Y. in the form of a golden shovel, as created by poet Terrance Hayes. Of course, your choice of line from the many is entirely up to you. Once you’ve chosen, you have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on May 30th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope you’ll join the conversation!

This has been a poetry-rich month already, so moving to look at something old in a new way was a pleasure. The Poetry Seven deliberately chose ekphrastic for April’s challenge, intending it to be easier for the many of us writing daily poetry. The only rule was that our poem had to be in conversation with a vintage photo – and we made no rules about what “vintage” meant, as it means something different to all of us.

I felt as if I’d cheated a bit by prepping ahead for this challenge. Part of my NPM practice has been creating weekly collages of Americana – photographs, posters, and bits of ephemera representative of America to me while writing short poems as an attempt to process our current… moment. I had access to myriad pictures this month, and enjoyed taking the time to really look at them. The photograph I chose is for this poem is from May, 1943, taken in a Harlem, NY neighborhood by the brilliant photographer Gordon Parks for the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information. The Library of Congress has myriad of Mr. Park’s FSA/OWI photographs in their Flickr collection, and I find that sifting through them is an experience like looking at old family albums. You don’t know who any of those people are, and your mother can only remember it was her mother’s second or third cousin’s auntie, and not a single name, but regardless, you retain a sense of connection. Once upon a time, these people lived lives like yours, put things out to thaw in the morning for dinner later, exclaimed over the first strawberries of the season, muttered over weeds, took out the trash, tightened their shoelaces. Once upon a time, their lives were like your life, and so on and so on it will go, until one day the vintage image in the photograph will be one of you, and your people, and your time. There is a true sense of connection in all of our stories.

I especially appreciate that Parks spend a lot of time photographing the ephemera of segregation that are recorded in a lot of other images from this time. You don’t see a focus on Whites Only signs or anything like that. Most of that he obfuscated by photographing ordinary people… living their ordinary lives. His images aren’t composed and tidy, but spur of the moment snaps that showed how people really navigated the American landscape. I really do encourage you, as you have time, to page through his collection at the Library of Congress, or the myriad other images on the Library of Congress’ Flickr collection. It’s quite a piece of history, and we need to embrace it while we have it.

I have forced my focus to be on short poems this month, though I have moved between haibun, cinquain, and tanka, unable to settle on any one form for what I want to say. As that has worked fairly well, I decided to deliberately move between forms again, allowing myself to look at different aspects of this very striking yet ordinary photograph through the lens of an elfchen, cinquain, and finally a haibun. This image is composed of myriad small things. What I love about it is that those small things shows me so much. Look at the care this woman took with her appearance – her nails are painted, though we can’t see the deep red her thumbnail and perhaps her lips sported. She’s wearing hoops, her brows are plucked and shaped, and her hair has marks of a roller set. She’s got on a snugly buttoned cardigan beneath her wool coat, and on the windowsill, the newspaper is spread. I wish I knew what was in her hand – her house keys? A spoon for her tea? A handkerchief or the puppy’s leash? Her presence in that window has the flavor of ritual. Perhaps she’s going to pop back inside in a moment to grab something to munch on while she checks out who wore what to work today, and who is being seen home from the bus stop by whom. I love how her dog is just as eagerly interested in the events outside of his house – his territory is being sniffed out, and listened to, and he’s rigid with attention. I love that we have a picture of a Black woman with a pet. Not a mop or a vacuum. Not a passel of children or a man. A pet, a manicure, and a good coat, and every appearance of self-satisfaction as she looks out of the window alone. Bully for you, girl.

Harlem Hound

Sit. Stay.
Eyes sharp, ears high
Voices rise like hot air
Scent unrolling tales like newsprint
Good boy.

Though I can only see her right hand, and don’t know if her left bore a ring, I admire her classy wool coat and seeing her knitted cardigan layered beneath know that May evening wasn’t quite warm enough yet for the windows to all be thrown quite so wide. Still, she’s ready for a change, eager for it in jaunty hoops and red-varnished nails, perhaps a domestic, breathing in the evening from her very own window, an office typist or a wartime riveter returned home for the evening, spreading out the paper and checking on the neighborhood between headlines. Perhaps she has a kettle at the boil, readying a last cup of coffee before she settles in, the wind in her face, and change on the horizon.

She wasn’t lonely
With such brave companionship
And the world turning
        Below, everything changing
        Country unstitched and made new.

There’s more in the photo album. You’ll find Tricia’s poem here. Liz’s poem is here. Laura’s skinny poem and Sara’s tribute is here. You’ll find Mary Lee’s poem here and Michelle K’s poem is here. More peeps may join in the ekphrastic exchanges before the weekend is over, so do check back for the full round-up. Meanwhile, Poetry Friday is ably hosted today by my second cousin, Heidi in her juicy little universe, where you’ll find plenty more poetry on all subjects, plus the latest stop on the Kidlit Progressive Poem, so don’t miss it. Thanks, Heidi!

The world is filled with hard things this week – maybe harder things than you’ve expected, in this moment. But in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.” We are leaning next to you, in our own hero-training. We share your windowsill and we’re looking out and giving a skeptical, brows raised, dispassionate stare at whatever is currently troubling you, right next to you. Whatever this moment is bringing you, you are not alone in it – remember, you are well-loved.

Have a courageous weekend.