Poetry Friday: In conversation with Lucille Clifton's Notes to Clark Kent

The challenge for March stayed close to our 2025 theme of conversation:  we were to be "in conversation" with a series of four poems written by Lucille Clifton, loosely known as Notes to Clark Kent. Here's an excerpt:

they had it wrong,

the old comics.

you are only clark kent

after all. oh,

mild mannered mister,

why did i think you could fix it?

See how with that question she so easily invites you to talk with her about this? After all, she's writing to Clark Kent, and letting us eavesdrop.  It feels like she would be open to conversation with us ordinary folk, too.  And she is--all four poems are spare but rich with feeling, and the casual tone makes it easy to engage with her words---to talk with this great poet about superheroes, admiration and disillusionment, rescue and risk...and so much more.  Please read more here (all four poems are very short.) 

At first, I simply imitated one of her poems, beginning with her line "They had it wrong..."  

They had it wrong,

the bishops—

you can’t slide

across the board

slicing through armies

on the sly to meet the queen;

how you must have puzzled

at my idea that I was 

invisible, able to slip

between worlds,

to Narnia or Prydain.

What did I expect? 

That the shadow

of my pointed hat—

the open book a peak

over my eyes—

would make me

less of a pawn,

plodding my way 

from chamber 

to chamber,

from dark to light 

and back again? 

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

On my second try, I veered off, and decided to address the poet directly, triying only to match her easy flow of ideas and emotions, as if I were writing her a note, too:

Dear Lucille,

I didn’t crush on Superman,

my comics were Casper,

that pudgy, good-hearted ghost

and Scrooge McDuck, 

whose pert-tailed nephews’ 

names rhymed like rap,

so I guess that’s why my questions

are different. I didn’t wonder who

they were—human or superhero—

I only wanted to float through

fights, misunderstandings, and darkness—

or to waddle, flanked by friends,

into schemes and out again, unchanged—-

to be the reason the story took you

out of this world into that one,

but didn’t leave you heartless.

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

You can find the conversations my poetry sisters had with these poems here:

Liz

Tanita

Mary Lee

Tricia

Laura

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Poetry Friday: ".....is a word" Poems

 

February and I have a history. So when we choose this month's challenge to be "....is a word" poems, I knew my word had to be February.  And yet---February (as I've complained before) is often brutal, temperamental, and generally unlikeable---which means it's hard to be "in conversation" with it, as our 2025 theme suggests.  Luckily, in contrast, "....is a word" poems  are full of word play, and clever imagery, and sometimes humor---all things that I love.  This form came to life with the great Nikki Grimes, and you can find several of her excellent poems here.  Laura Purdie Salas has a complete lesson plan on them, as well as one of the best examples of the form I've ever read: Sheep is a Solid Word.   But in short, these poems are free verse, and celebrate one word and all its implications, including the shape of the letters, the sound of the word itself, and any colors, smells, tastes, and other sensory details the word evokes.   

Here's where that led me in conversation with the word February:

February is a Fancy Word

February is a fancy word,

longer than it should be for

a month so short.

Perhaps that’s because it has to hold

plumply grumpy groundhogs, 

two pretty perfect presidents, 

eons of evidence of black history,

and cartoonish contradictory candy hearts—

MAKE ME/YES/WHY NOT?

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

And then I tried again, with the same opening line: 

February is a fancy word

it trips your tongue

for if you try to say that “r”—

that’s just trouble fe-brewing—-

another foot of snow—

or maybe twenty-two?

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

Then I moved on to some etymology:

February is an Ancient Word

February is an ancient word

in many languages, meaning: 

a month of scrubbing,

a month of mud,

a month of cabbage;

but in Finland, 

it's named for

icy pearls that

decorate the trees. 

How feb-ulous is that?

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

And finally, I concluded, as I usually do, by complaining about February:

February is a Messy Word

February is a messy word,

the snarl of snotty sneezes

the blackened dregs of dirty snow

the stink of soppy boots

toppled in the doorway

And worse of all—

the sloppy way it gains

and loses days—giving

babies disappearing birthdays

for the rest of their lives---

messy!

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

What do YOU think of February? 

Please read my poetry sisters' less whiny (probably) poems here:

Liz

Tricia

Tanita

Laura

Mary Lee

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Denise Krebs. 

Poetry Friday: The Tanku

 It's a new year of poetry challenges! And this year, I've vowed to be more prepared, more present, and more committed.  Will it hold?  I don't know, but I do know that writing poetry with my poetry sisters---and the wider world of all of you who observe Poetry Friday--is good for my soul.  Let's encourage each other, ok? And more specifically, let's be in conversation, because that's the overarching theme we've chosen for 2025.  All our poems will be aware of the value of listening, responding, and interacting with others with the purpose of deeper understanding. 

With that theme in mind, January's challenge was a tanku--a hybrid form that consists of one tanka (5/7/5/7/7) followed by an answering haiku (5/7/5)  It's shorter challenge, by design, since January always jumps out at us like an unexpected snow storm while we're still digging out from the holidays...am I right? 

 But like all forms new to me, it took some fiddling about to realize the potential here.  In a conversation, the "offer" (as it's often called in improv) and the "response" should be connected but distinct. We can both affirm (say yes) and move the conversation forward (the yes AND part.) So, too, with the tanku.  The tanka sets up imagery, and the haiku responds to that in a fresh way. Or so we hope.  And--here's where I saw the potential--you can also string the tanku together so the conversation meanders on a bit, if you find the topic interesting or have a lot to say.  

And I did have such a topic because luckily, a friend had invited me to the symphony at the Kennedy Center the evening before I began to draft my poem. I'm a neophyte to symphonies, at least live ones, and so I came to the performance with extra excitement of not knowing what to expect, which was compounded by the fact that there was no paper program, only a digital QR code (which I did not use until the intermission.) I was immediately struck by how different the pre-game is for the symphony than it is for the theater I'm used to, with no curtain to hide the warmup.  I was intrigued to see performers quietly laughing and occasionally talking to each other in a relaxed way as they tested their bows and reeds before the conductor arrived, with no visible jitters, at least not to me.  And then there was the matter of the dress code---no one wants to upstage the music, so the orchestra was a sea of black uniformity. Again, so different from the diverse costumes of the theater.  And yet...when the show got down to business-- the amazing, focused, terrifyingly challenging business of making complicated music as one voice---it was very much like the team work of a great play.  

I enjoyed it all thoroughly, even though I knew little about the music being performed.  Later, I read this review in the Post, and understood more of what was happening, including the unique greatness of the first piece (which I adored) and the fact that the guest conductor was making his debut. But in the moment, I saw little things amongst the big things, and that is what I chose to write my series of tanku about---a mini conversation between what my "beginner mind" saw and the complexity of what I was hearing.  It was my self-made program if you will. 

 Gabriela Ortiz's Téenek — Invenciones de Territorio

at the symphony

no curtain; warm-up exposed;

casual notes blare—

bodies jostle, cozy close; 

the baton lifts; our hearts heat 

a storm strikes the stage

birds scatter, wildly singing 

ravishing thunder 

Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor

at the symphony

a black-limbed army of bows

salutes Beethoven.

I scout the dark-footed ranks

for a flash of rebellion.

all tidy on stage

but bouncing in seat four F:

a white pom-pom hat

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances"

at the symphony

the QR code is useless

I'm disarmed, bootless 

at the edge of the known world

dizzied by movie music

those who know the score

are no more free than you from

the map of whirlpools 

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

You can find my sister poets' posts here:

Liz

Tanita

Tricia

Mary Lee

Laura

Poetry Friday is hosted today by BookSeedStudio.