Posts Tagged ‘poetry’

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Poetry Challenge 51

July 9, 2010

This is the time of insects here in the Interior.   Here at Mattie’s Pillow, we hear the buzz of yellowjackets everywhere.  There’s a nest in the hay barn, one in the eaves above our grill (logical place, if you’re a yellowjacket), and one in the greenhouse.  They are in a perpetual state of agitation; any vibration or movement near the nest sets them off.

So, it’s time for a poem about an insect.  Have one crawl through the poem, or have it land on a line somewhere.  Be amazed at it, or be indifferent.  Let sound be part of the poem, the small peripheral sounds that you don’t notice at first, until they stop.

Here’s one.  Send me one of yours and I’ll post it here!

.

The Stink Bug on Joe’s Shirt

We talk in sun

then the sudden chill

of cumulus, stacked

high with moisture, then heat

at our backs, on our faces,

the scrubbed blue

sky.  You lean against

a lounge chair.  Your hair,

.

wild as the clouds,

curls with the charge

and buzz that fills

your blood.  We talk.

We watch your face.

The cloud passes, all

that roiling not yet

enough to loose sparks,

and the blue shadows,

your eyes.  A bug

.

iridescent,

a small bronze shield, totters

up your shirt, legs

like shaved whiskers,

bent to cling above

the “l” in “devil,”

climbing up the curled

tail toward your shoulder,

all it needs for a cliff.

.

Someone reaches

to flick it where it gleams.

Your prize:

the grown-back hair

the numbness gone

the sun in its place

and you striding

beneath it—one

bug suddenly flicked

away.  A stink.

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Poetry Challenge 50

June 22, 2010

In honor of the solstice and the delirious quantity of light we’re getting these days, write from a giddy place.  Think of a time or place or color of the clouds that made you feel silly and happy all at once.  For me, last night, it was a Midnight Sun Baseball Game that went 15 innings under the silvery light of Solstice night.  We sat in the stands and hollered and laughed as the sun slipped behind a row of hills, still sending a wash of yellow light into the arc of the sky.  Then as the last hit brought all the runners in, the light behind the hills brightened, the cirrus clouds turned fireweed pink and the sun slid back up again.  A perfect–if very long–solstice night.

Write about a moment of unexpected glee.  Use all five senses, of course.

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

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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.

———————————————————————-

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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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

April 28, 2010

Spring Update

Yesterday, driving down the road to the ridge, looking up at the hill ahead, I saw what I first took for snow in the trees–a hazy white area running along the side of the ridge, a softening in the dull brown of the bare branches there.  It took me a moment to realize that what I was looking at was a swath of willows growing on the side of the hill, their catkins fully bloomed from pussy willows to open thumb-sized “blossoms” of fluff and pollen.  As I drove, I noticed these patches all along the hills, and as I rounded the curve heading up the ridge, I saw the trees, their open tops hazy with fluff.  It’s not the flamboyant pinks or whites of cherry or apple blossoms; just a silvery fluff, but it will do.

And the mosquitoes are out in force, dotting Mattie and Sam’s faces, in spite of the repellent I wipe on them.  Again, this year I’ll look for a better solution for bugs, the down side of summer.

As of last night, the ice was getting punchy near the tripod in Nenana, with leads open by the river bank, but no news of the tripod moving yet.  We’re into the range of dates we picked for it to go out this year.  More on this in a later post.

School has two weeks to go.  Students and faculty alike are getting restless with our long warm spell.  My tomato seedlings wait by the window to be transplanted and to move to the greenhouse.   The horses are nearly done with shedding and are ready for something more interesting to do.

This Saturday, the Kentucky Derby, then my long-time friend Jean Anderson and I will give a reading at the Arts Association.  Somewhere in the mail, my new book from Salmon Press makes its way to me from Ireland.

There’s a lot happening–more than this, even–but for now, for the next couple of weeks, we move through the end of winter and all it means, ready to pop one day into green up, into summer, into the time that makes the Interior worth it all.

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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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