Poetry Friday: "In Just---" Echoes of ee cummings

The assignment for the Poetry Seven this month was to write a poem in the style of ee cummings, taking one of his works as inspiration. Although cummings is one of my favorite poets, and I've blogged about him before (in relation to Frank Cottrell Boyce's fabulous novel, Cosmic) I did a little research anyway. And discovered this:

Between the ages of eight and twenty-two, cummings wrote a poem a day.

Yeah. That.

And here I am, trying to follow in his pen strokes.

First of all, I had a hard time naming what I was attempting to do. What did "in the style of" mean?

imitating?
mimicking?
shadowing?
following?
tracing?

Then one of the Poetry Seven used a word I liked: echoing. Perhaps I could do that. (thanks, Andi!)

in Just-

dusk when the world is shadow-

mossed the one-winged lightningbug

blinks, incan/descent

and pillbugandmoth come

floating from screenshanks and 

scatterall and it’s

dusk

when the world is wing-wonderful

the lop-flighted

lighteningbug blinks

incan/descent

and beetleandroach come scalltering

from rot-hopping and stank-rope and

it’s dusk

and

the

single-oared 

lightningbug stutters

incan

/descent

---Sara Lewis Holmes, inspired by "in Just-" by ee cummings


One more thing: we also decided to record these poems. Click on the sound file below to hear me read my work aloud.





Other echoes of ee cummings can be found at each of the Poetry Seven's blogs today:

Liz, echoing "i like my body when it is"
Tricia, echoing "silence.is a looking"
Tanita, echoing "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls"
Laura,  echoing "Spring is like a perhaps hand"
Kelly,  echoing "maggie and milly and molly and may"
Andi, echoing "a wind has blown the rain away"

As a bonus, we've gathered all our recordings in one place on Soundcloud. (Perhaps we'll continue to record our work? I, for one, love hearing work read aloud.)

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Katie at the Logonauts.