Poetry Friday: Inspired by Jane Hirshfield's Two Versions

November's challenge was to take a line or theme from Jane Hirshfield's lovely poem, "Two Versions," and create a new poem with it. I can't link to the poem online, but it can be found in her latest collection, The Asking.  

I love this kind of challenge because great poets distill so much into their lines that if you choose one--almost any line, really---you are already super-charged with striking imagery and potent ideas.  For me, the line that stood out was the second in Hirshfield's poem, which begins:

In the first version, I slept by a stream

All night awake things traveled near.

"Awake things traveling near" immediately made me think of my childhood, of discovering I could manipulate my vision as I fell asleep.  (It's possibly a remembrance of lucid dreaming--who can say?) I took the line as the title of my new poem, and dived in:

All night awake things traveled near

    (inspired by Jane Hirshfield's Two Versions)

This is my remembrance of magic:

in the darkness, I floated 

on the lake of half-sleep

where the islands of faerie, 

glinting with life, drifted

in the black satin air.

With eager, powerful strokes,

on purpose, on purpose,

I swam to them, to witness

thumb-sized women stringing

washing on cobwebs; 

giggling boys sloshing 

water in acorns from wells;

messy-haired girls wielding

brooms of beetle legs--

the most ordinary

of tasks to spy upon, 

a holy observation

of awake things

traveling near.

-------Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved) 

My poetry sisters' inspired poems can be found here:

Liz

Laura

Tricia

Kelly

Mary Lee

Tanita (who is hosting Poetry Friday today!)

Poetry Friday: Seven Ways of Looking

September's challenge was to write a poem in the vein of Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird---except we were only going to attempt SEVEN ways of looking at something.

It turns out the hard part was not the number of stanzas (looks?) but deciding on a thing worth looking at.  In theory, all things are worthy of poetry, but the brilliance of the original poem begins with the fact that Wallace Stevens chose to feature a blackbird-- something that is both ordinary and symbolic, and also dynamic--the bird can move, swoop, circle.  As a result, we get a gorgeous swirling, dipping in and out of reality feeling as we read his poem. 

Oddly enough, though, we learn little of the blackbird itself, for this is not fact-based poem, seeking to illuminate the bird's unique qualities. Instead, after we read the poem, we wind up thinking less about the blackbird and more about  how everything is connected. (Or at least I do---here's my extended dive into the poem, if you're interested.) 

How in the world to replicate that? 

I was at a loss during our ZOOM writing session, so I decided to hew closely to the original poem, seeking to imitate its rhythms.  I find that approach often works as a place to begin, and then I can manipulate the draft so it isn't a complete copy-cat.  However, I still had the problem of what to write about, so I took the object at hand---the poem itself.  Yup.  Maybe a dodge, but this poem has always called to me, and writing about how it made me feel was the best I could manage this month.  

Here it is: 

Seven Ways of Looking at a Poem

The poem is beating its wings.

My heart must be flying. 

I know free fall,

and updrafts. But 

I know, too— this poem

is dense as spun glass.

The poem circles

and circles and circles

the snowy mountain.

It was morning

all day. I eat

nothing. The poem

preens. 

 

I don’t know which

to prefer—reading the poem,

or the silence afterwards.

Later, when I 

walk between the hedges,

the poem shoots a bird

out of the sky,

lays it at my feet.

On the page,

the only thing breathing

is the poem.

                                                ---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)

My Poetry Sisters "ways of looking" can be found here:

Liz

Tanita

Tricia

Kelly

Laura

Mary Lee

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Irene Latham.

 

Poetry Friday: Wabi-Sabi Poems

Ruins of a banquet hall,
Sudeley Castle, UK

June's challenge was to write a poem capturing the idea of wabi-sabi, the Japanese concept of impermanence and imperfection.  Here's a quote that Tricia shared from the book, Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence by Andrew Juniper:

Wabi-sabi is an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Taken from the Japanese words wabi, which translates to less is more, and sabi, which means attentive melancholy, wabi-sabi refers to an awareness of the transient nature of earthly things and a corresponding pleasure in the things that bear the mark of this impermanence.

Now, I've written about wabi-sabi before, and seemed to remember it being about celebrating "the crack in everything."  And, on our recent trip to Wales and England, I reveled in taking photos of glorious ruins of castles and abbeys.  (I do love a good ruin.)  But this time, the phrase that haunted me from that quote was "attentive melancholy." 

I'm not by nature a pessimistic person--not that I can't be negative or grumpy at times, but melancholy implies a sort of marination in sadness that I'm not capable of sustaining.  But what was I missing by not looking with that sort of attention--the kind of attention that doesn't try to change things for the better, but acknowledges what is unfinished, and imperfect, and sees the beauty in that?   

I'm so curious to see what my poetry sisters came up with in answer to that question. As for me, my only idea came from looking at my hands and thinking that I'm as spotted now as an old leaf. 

This leaf

this leaf will dry

the color seep away

the veins break

this leaf will fall

lose its light

unmoor from the tree

the road will go away

the fence, the barn, too

the house where I met him

this leaf will crackle

under muddy boots

this spotted hand let go

-----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved) 

Explore my poetry sisters' posts here:

Liz

Tanita

Laura

Tricia

Mary Lee

Poetry Friday is hosted by our own Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect.