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Poetry Challenge 49

June 8, 2010

Today a distant friend e-mailed me that she was reading a poem, “Bird News,”  from my new book, Beneath a Portrait of a Horse, and that it had her tongue-tied.  It’s always amazing to discover that someone sees what you intended in a poem–or sees more than you ever thought was there.  This was a poem I started years ago, tinkered with, abandoned, tinkered again, and finally included in the book, hoping that in made sense in somethingof the way I had hoped it would when I wrote the first draft.  Putting a book together allowed me to see old poems in new ways.  Sometimes just placing one poem next to another brought out some association I hadn’t noticed in the older poem and made it seem fresh once again.

So, go back and find an old poem you’ve stashed away somewhere.  Read it as if you were a distant reader, as if you had no idea where the poem originated or where it’s going.  Let yourself be surprised by the phrases that actually do turn out well–and do some housekeeping on the ones that fall flat.   Pare away.  Strengthen nouns and verbs.   Make short lines long, long lines short.  Or discover that the poem is actually a complete whole  that arose from the deepest awake places in your unconscious.

Post it here in the comments section–your oldies and actually goodies.  When I have a few posted here, I’ll post the poem my friend was reading, too!

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Poetry Challenge 48

May 20, 2010

We’re into leaf-out here in the interior–the leaves, still small and yellow-green, shine as they flicker in the breeze.  The wind has been stronger than usual as the ever-increasing daylight creates unstable warm air masses that move across the flats or up the river system.  The other day, I came home to find Sam in the middle of the corral staring hard at the hill behind the house, where a large spruce had fallen–luckily, along the side of the hill and not onto the house or the corral.   Yesterday, he spooked at the hose being pulled along the side of the corral.  We’re all a bit jumpy.

So write about a phobia that turned out to be nothing to worry about–or a close call (like the tree).  Let the wind blow through the poem–or have a cat run through it.

Add it as a comment and I’ll post it here.

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Here’s a poem from Tim Murphrey:

Bernoullian Extacy

Scraping the ice from the pane
solidifies to my vision
the relationship between two lovers:
Me
and the ground.
But the doubt in our courting lies
on me, an Earthbound yearning,
and I wonder if she wants
like I do, or worse.
Our union can only end in disaster.
A buzzing, as of switches being thrown,
that light, airy feeling
from my new mistress
helps to lull me into the big lie
that this may never end.
Fast, too fast! and I’m always watching,
straining to see the ground, now grown cold,
expression seldom changing,
quick, constant, moving glimpses of us sailing over,
swollen belly mocking; what was once the Earth’s
now belongs to the vespers.
She’ll have to tolerate our presence soon, as we give in
to the sinking feeling –
Our union can only end
in disaster.

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Poetry Challenge 47

May 7, 2010

Birdbrain Love

All this week, a pair of robins, who I’m calling Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock, have been flying against the window of our computer room, over and over.  The male robin perches on the railing of the stair landing to our back door, eyes the window, then flutters up to a certain spot on the glass, thumps it, then flutters back to the railing.  From there, he eyes the glass again, as if certain he can figure this out and succeed at whatever birdbrained scheme he’s up to.  Then he does it again.  Mrs. Hitchcock watches from the willow nearby, patient with his foolishness.  We think this behavior may have something to do with the nest they’re building out of last year’s fireweed and hay up on the butt of a roof beam above the window; perhaps he’s defending the nest from his own reflection in the window as he flies up to the beam.  Or not.

But it’s spring–after many false starts.  The hills are greening up as the birch and willow buds open; there’s a mist of green moving across the tree tops.

So, write about the foolishness spring brings, or love, or birds.  Post it as a comment and I’ll add the poems to this post.

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Poetry Challenge 46

April 30, 2010

Synesthesia

Today, in honor of my new book, Beneath a Portrait of a Horse, somewhere en route to me from Salmon Press, I gave a craft talk to students and others at the university here.   Along the way, to explain where poetry comes from for me, I began talking about synesthesia–the condition of intermixing the senses, so that sound and sight evoke each other–or taste, or smell.  After the talk, I learned that a mathematician friend of mine–also a talented singer and guitarist–has synesthesia.  We compared the colors of numbers–three is pink for me, green for her–and discussed their genders and personalities.  I don’t know if I’m truly synesthetic, but the idea of one sense suggesting or calling forth the others has long intrigued me and I like to make those associations as I write.

So, the challenge–start with one sense and let it morph into another.  What color is the taste of chocolate?  The smell of fish? Of damp earth after first rain? What sound is ice or clouds?

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Poetry Challenge 45

April 23, 2010

Spring is silly season here in the Interior.   The snow is melting, but the ground is still frozen near enough to the surface that the grass is still brown and the leaves have not yet begun to bud.  Same news as last week, in fact.   We’re waiting for the ice to go out in Nenana, when those of us who’ve chosen the exact minute that the tripod moves and trips the clock in the watch house will be a little bit richer.   On campus, today was a holiday from classes.  Years ago, it was a clean up day, but now, it’s an occasion to drop watermelons from the eighth floor, to play mud volleyball, and generally indulge in foolishness.  We all need a break.

So how does spring–or it’s maddeningly slow approach–make you silly?  Or how does waiting for anything that takes time send you off in wild imaginary directions?   And, considering the tender feelings of those of us who haven’t yet seen green, no poems about flowers, please!

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Poetry Challenge 44

April 7, 2010

I hear that it’s spring in some locations south of here.  Trish McConnell in her blog The Other End of the Leash posted some stunning photos of crocuses and daffodils.  But here in the Interior, we have piles of gray snow, melting and refreezing puddles, and lots of brown ground.  It will be a month before the first green.

So write about opposites found in one thing–winter embedded in a spring month, the dog with the cat-like traits–or how opposites are more like each other than they are different.

Send a poem as a comment and I’ll post it here.

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Poetry Challenge 43

March 30, 2010

Warmer and warmer days here.  Yesterday we put in a few extra hours cleaning the corral as a winter’s worth of snow-buried manure emerges, despite our best efforts to rake it up throughout the winter.  Today, the footing was all packed ice and punchy snow, so the horses get extended holiday.

Today, in class, we discussed William Carlos Williams and the phrase “no ideas but in things.”  So what ideas are the things around you revealing or concealing?  For me the emerging manure is compost-to-be, then tomatoes or lettuce or yellow crookneck squash–and then a delicious meal.

So write about a thing that you suddenly notice, now that it’s spring.  Don’t think about it too much; just write about the object.   Then read it and see what else has attached itself to it.

Post your poem as a comment and I’ll post it here.

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Poetry Challenge 42

March 16, 2010

Daylight savings time has warped the day–suddenly it seems lighter all around because here in the interior the mornings and afternoons are getting lighter fast as we add 7 minutes of light a day–an extra hour of daylight each ten days or so.   How has the returning light affected you?  What disjointedness do you notice in your day?

Write a poem in which light behaves in ways it shouldn’t or surprises you in some way.

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Here’s a response from KD at KD’s Bookblog:

“Always an early riser, I still have hours of darkness as I do my first work, despite the change in the clocks. This came this morning.”

Circle of Light

The green glow of a patio lantern,
still lit but weak just before dawn,
draws no useful circle of light,
is so little that it could be
a green freckle on the skin of night,
a chink in dark armor; it could be
the wrecking light on a rocky shore
luring Thursday into the backyard,

the beacon feeding its solar self but
seeming, come full daylight, a seed,
a green sprig that will bloom again in the dark,
a gem of sunshine to last me
until Friday sails over the horizon.

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Poetry Challenge 41

March 2, 2010

Thinking about the public act of writing–publishing, reading aloud, blogging, handing a poem to a friend.  Today, I was lucky enough to attend a panel where one of my favorite bloggers, AKMuckraker of Mudflats, was speaking.  At one point, she talked about the first time she realized that her writing, her blog entries, had hit a nerve–and how that changed her approach to writing and, ultimately, her life.

Many writers I know hesitate to publish–or find the process painful or complicated.  I procrastinate–it’s too much trouble to buy all those stamps and walk in the front door of the post office and send things off or even to hit “send” on the computer.  But when someone reads or hears something I write–you, right now, for instance–it feels like the impulse that led me to write in the first place has come full circle and is fulfilled by landing in the reader’s mind and by the thoughts it sparks there.

So, write about something you hesitated to communicate.  What stopped you?  What egged you on?  What was the sky like that day?

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Poetry Challenge 40

February 21, 2010

The Thaw

Here in the Interior, temperatures are sneaking above freezing at mid-day.  The snow is melting away on south-facing hills, birds are darting wildly through the air as if they think they missed the beginning of mating season, and the roads are slick and treacherous from the melting ice over still-frozen pavement.   People are shedding coats, eyeing the greenhouse, ordering seeds, walking out in the sun and thinking of summer plans.  All the while, we know our folly, for we are not yet out of February and not yet into March.  At the back of our minds, we hear the old song, “When It’s Springtime in Alaska, It’s Forty Below.”  Really.  We’re restless, joyful, yet preparing for this respite from winter to be snatched away from us by deep cold and more snow.

So, here’s the challenge–write about a thaw of some kind: an old grudge melts away, an intractable animal becomes gentle, a place that seemed ugly suddenly looks beautiful, or an actual thaw complete with mud, green things, dripping water.   Post it in the comments section and I’ll add it here.  All of us in the Interior are waiting.

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