Posts Tagged ‘poetry’

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Poetry Challenge 14

April 6, 2009

Defy Gravity

Inspired by the ballet. Write about gravity and what defies it–birds, the wind, climbing plants, a dancer. These things lift our spirits, but don’t say that in the poem. Let the object, gesture, scene do the lifting.

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Here’s my response, though it took me in a different direction–a different kind of gravity:

You, Walking

Birches stir
the restless air;
you walking
away, dog at your heels.

Your coat
drapes your shoulders
billows slightly
gray as spring clouds.

I pause, watching
in the car mirror–
your slow steps
over packed spring snow.

The sorrows of others
hang on you, but
imagination is vast,
cris-crossed with dreams
full of flying, of horses running,
of tomatoes, sweet
and warm on the palm.

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Poetry Challenge 13

April 2, 2009

13 Ways

In honor of Poetry Month, and because this is Challenge 13, take a tip from Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Pick something at random–I once wrote one on a roll of masking tape–and write 13 short “views” of the thing, ranging from the minute view to the grand.

Stevens’ poem starts:

“Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.”

Here’s a link to the whole poem:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15746

And here’s a site with poets who are writing a poem a day during April. Don’t know if I’ll be that ambitious.

http://peninkpaper.blogspot.com/

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Poetry Challenge 12

April 1, 2009

This challenge was sent by William Lawson at Cider Press (see Poetry Challenge 11).

A sentence for you: “If I had a magic wand, and could wave it only once, I’d…” And forget about what you think you should or ought to do…but try instead to imagine something “larger” than that; something as yet “unthunk.” (How’s that for a challenge?)

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Poetry Challenge 11

March 28, 2009

Lost and Found

Now that the snow is melting in some places–not yet here–think of all the things that reappear that you thought were lost.  Write about a lost thing that shows up again in an unlikely place.  Think of the stuff that falls from your pockets in the car, or the glove you’ve been looking for that’s been buried under snow, or the grocery list from months ago that turns up in a book, or an old friend reappearing.  Write abut the loss, the finding, or both.

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To see one response on Cider Press’  blog check:

http://ciderpress.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/impulsive-writing-16/#comment-46

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

March 25, 2009

Past the equinox now and the light increases daily. By the end of April, light will begin to compress the deep dark of night to a few hours and we’ll be restless for the heady time of summer with nearly endless days and fizzy energy.

But now, we’re still firmly frozen in March; for us, it’s the cruelest month. The light brings promise of spring, but even a week ago the temperatures dropped to 30 below and we know more snow will fall. This is the month of divorces and suicides-not to be too dreary about it all. We know that other places are already past crocuses and daffodils. We start our seeds inside under shop lights or in south facing windows and hope for the best, for the garden is still covered in two feet of white stuff. Now is when hope fails some of us, when even all the love and care we can spare to others in our small community is not enough and, each March, a few drop away.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I heard the news of the death of Nick Hughes, here in Fairbanks. I first heard of him in the 80s when his father, Ted Hughes, came to the Midnight Sun Writer’s Conference as faculty. It seemed like a great coup to us young writers that we had gotten such a “presence” to come to our conference–though we also had Ray Carver, Tess Gallagher, Annie Dillard, and others who were rising at the time and are the literary establishment now. There was the usual gossip of writers’ conferences–who got special favor, a private reading, and why–but among the buzz was the astonishing news that Hughes was here in part because his son, Nick, was a Ph.D. student at the university and was working as a biologist and researcher here.

“Nick?,” I said, “of ‘Nick and the Candlestick’?” Yes, that Nick, whose mother, Sylvia Plath’s, passionate poem about his birth meant so much to me as a, then, young mother. The child that figures so prominently in what’s shocking, poignant, and fascinating in Plath’s own death. I don’t want to dwell on this; what’s been important about Nick in our midst is that he lived a life as remote as could be from all this history. Those of us in literary circles who knew of his presence among us, knew, too, that he wanted nothing to do with the literary world. For all I knew, he lived among friends, was loved, loved the plant and animal life of the Interior and the wild, expansive beauty of the landscape much as all of us do who live here. For all I knew, that and our careful mindfulness not to bring the past to him, was enough. Sadly, it wasn’t.

So, now, March drifts toward April. We look around, emerging out of winter cautiously. Who is still among us? This is the time to smile at our neighbors, to give that hug–flu or no flu–to share what we can. We remember who we’ve lost and the lessons of their lives. We live with them; we incorporate them into our vision. We plant seeds; they emerge, threadlike, vulnerable, pale; we hold them in the light and hope they grow.

(To read more about Nick Hughes, here’s a link to Dermott Cole’s column in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner http://newsminer.com/news/2009/mar/23/poet-sylvia-plaths-son-prominent-fairbanks-biologi/

and a link to Plath’s poem, “Nick and the Candlestick” < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178967>  )

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Poetry Challenge 10

March 15, 2009

Silence.

Stop what you are doing and listen. How silent is it, really? What is the most silent place you’ve ever been? How did it sound? Or write about the silence that occurs at odd moments in the day–between tasks, between places, between people. Sit in silence as you write and find the words that rise up there.

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Here’s a response from Glow at Beyond Ester:

the persimmon cat purred in his sleep
purred as he groomed himself
purred as his brother bit his neck
purred watching birds flit
purred while being brushed
purred while being stalked
purred while laying with dogs
purred at the vet’s office.

he purred on the couch
he purred on the bed
he purred on the table
he purred on the desk
he purred on the rug
he purred in the litter box.

the persimmon cat purred always.

October
when the persimmons for which he was named
thudded to the ground,
he replaced his purr with a yowl
a catawauling wail
a screeching hollar
a piercing scream.

on the way to the vet
in the car
for several minutes
the purr overtook the yowls
then the purr stopped.

now, silence in our house.
and a maple box inscribed
Persimmon: Purring Forever.

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And another from Glow (hmmm…must be a good prompt)

late Saturday night
frantic knock
the neighbor shirtless shoeless in January
my house is on fire, he said.

we hurried
but there was nothing to be done
firemen bustled to no avail
water cast again and again

I expected brightness cast against trees
giant whooshing sounds
a cacophony of cracks and crashes
but flames are surprisingly dark
fire surprisingly silent
the heat gobbled up sound
sucked noise like air
seized and smothered talk
only soundless smoke
wordless ash
molten bits of house
dribbled among us
nothing for us to do
but watch in our newfound deafness

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My response:

Potatoes
chopped in cubes
pale yellow, dropped
into broth. It bubbles,
the wood stove ticks,
small motors that smooth
our passage through the day
hum, though it’s now night.

In this noisy silence,
the dog’s faint snore,
a tulip petal falls
from its thin yellowing
stem, from the blue vase,
I hear words said
yesterday or before
and you, in bitter
cold dark, driving,
driving up the hill
with milk.

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Poetry Challenge 8

March 5, 2009

Out of  Order

OK, so I can’t count!

Here’s one from my composition classroom, suggested to me as a journal exercise by D.A. Bartlett–my long-time mentor.

Write about a process backward. Either start with the end result or write about undoing something. This could be a cake or an action you wish you could take back. Or play time backward. Or, like these poetry challenges, just write things out of order–add randomess.

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Glow and I seem to be on similar wavelengths–missing things.  She challenged me to add a poem.  I think I was influenced by hers! 

My response:

 

Spring reverses itself.
seeds arrive in the mail,
snow slides from the roof,
a large hill of it
blocks the door. We carve
steps in its slope
to get over it. The dog
can’t stop barking
at the sounds snow
makes. Icicles form,
glisten,

then the sky darkens
earlier than yesterday.
We go sliding
back to winter, snow
sifting all over hoods,
our shoulders, the cleared
driveway.

In the morning you leave
sharp tracks in the snow.

By now, they are gone.

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And Glow’s

 

Despair was later, now anxiety
spun me through the woods
as I searched for the white cat.
The house was half empty, half full.
My things only, hers gone.
Her new lover’s truck
needing a valve job, I noted,
chugged down the drive
nearly backing into the fence.
The goats bleated watching
the antique bureau nearly dropped.
Just go, I said.
It’s true, she said.
You lied, I said.
She means nothing, she said.
You cheated on me, I said.
A strawberry blotch,
mouth-sized,
spread across her neck.
A blush gone awry.

The white cat lay dead in the moonlight
A copperhead slithered silently
after, and, I assume, before.
Maybe a slight rustle of leaves
a twitch of grass
was all that warned me
and the cat
of disaster.

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From Alaskapsych (not sure which challenge this is for):

Heraclitis et al

I stepped in the same river twice,
and twice again.
Time and tide waited for me,
dreaming,
I was awake

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Poetry Challenge 9

March 2, 2009

Found Poetry

Find a bit of language–overheard conversation, labels on an object, street signs, etc–and use it in a poem. Break the words apart from their usual sense. Surprise yourself with what’s contained in them. For example, in the Effie Kokrine class while we were listing phrases from a freewriting exercise on the board, one student said, “Energy drinks rock,” and I heard it as noun-verb-noun instead of adjective-noun-verb, so that in my mind, the energy was drinking the rock. A good start for a poem.

What do you find? What do you hear? What else does it bring to mind?

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Here’s a response from Glow:

ruby crescent fingerlings
fat small doggie paws
swamp mama’s greatest
persimmon fur pie

the verse repeats
the new celtic fiddle restrings
the cats peek out from under
blood gushes, snow flitters

I play at night before bed
dream characters sing all night
I wake up with music
skimming through my head

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

February 27, 2009

Grey flannel skies today, flat light all across the sky, fine snow falling. This morning, when I went to feed the horses, flakes so fine I couldn’t see them at first, sifting down, a light dust of white on Sam’s white back, a veil of it over Mattie’s black one.

It’s warmer now and there’s more light than when I started these posts in January. Today in the Effie Kokrine class, we read a poem from Joe Enzweiler’s A Winter on Earth in which he wrote of the light on snow as “burning.” When I asked the kids what he meant, they said, maybe the snow is melting. After a few tries, I realized that the poem starts with “February 1” and, for us, that time a little over three weeks ago, when the sun first began to cast coppery light over the morning or evening snow, when it didn’t quite reach full light or make anything gleam much less melt, is distant memory. Now we’re on the ever-accelerating swoop into light that fills the days and crowds out night. In less than a month, the equinox. We’re ready to forget winter before it’s really over.

Some friends of mine have finally gotten me to sign up on Facebook.  It’s a heady feeling–conversations between people who know each other but are scattered across the world. Looking at photos of horses under palm trees or reading about the weather in Australia reminds me both how narrow my Alaskan view can seem and how exotic to others.   Joe, who is my poetry hero, has resisted technology for as long as I’ve known him. When friends visit from Outside, I often take them to his house; the Alaskan cabin-dwelling poet, a cliché, but in Joe’s case his house, his poetry, his woodworking, his rock-wall building, his conversational flights of fancy are integrated, all of a piece. But now Joe has a laptop. I’m not sure how to take this.

The light is fading from the day. I’m about to leave off writing and go out to throw hay to the horses and head to a gathering of friends with a loaf of jalapeno cornmeal bread from Lulu’s. I’m grateful for the technology that lets me write this, for you reading this–a gift to any writer.   I’m grateful, too, for the mundane chores the horses require; they ground me to things it’s easy to forget, the way we forget how the light shone on the snow only three weeks ago.

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Poetry Challenge 7

February 16, 2009

Sun and Moon.  In the Effie Kokrine class, Climate Change and Creative Expression, we talked about where the sun and moon are in the sky right now.  In Alaska, in winter, the sunrise is always to the south, though, in summer, it can travel nearly a full circuit of the sky northeast to northwest. 

So, write a poem that lets the reader know something about where you live, using images of the sun and/or moon.  Stay objective–how does the sun reflect off the snow, for example, or what do the pock marks on the moon remind you of.   Let the poem take you somewhere else if it wants to.

 

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Rseponse from Glow

 here,
October to December,
spruce hang dark
birches cast no shadow
moose merge invisible
Arctic blue lurks
even at midday.

here,
early January
clamors its arrival
a sliver of sun
a mere morsel
creeps for seconds only
across the kitchen wall.

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My response:

At the kitchen table
sun slants across
my keyboard, warms
my fingers, a subtle energy
on joints so fluid now,
so stiff when I walk
outside, gloves off, to hold
curled fingers to the nose
of the horse whose breath
on my hands keeps cold
from penetrating to bone.

Bone, that tree that muscle
blooms from like the leaves
that carry sunlight to root
and back to bud; that anchor
that holds the horse to ground,
strung with ligament, tendon,
the oval cap of knee; that pedestal
that holds the tank of the body
gurgling with hay and the cage
of ribs that buoys the rider’s
body; that push against the ground,
that leap ahead, mimicking flight.

It starts with sun
on grass, green light
through a blade of brome,
the quick flash and gleam
in summer breezes, the busy
capturing of warmth and light
into stalks and leaves
joyously tall before the mower
passes, then sun-dried, turned,
baled, stacked, opened, spread
chewed by horses
feeding belly and bone,
preparing for flight.

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