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| Spotted owl, Encyclopedia Britannica |
May's challenge was to write a golden shovel, using as inspiration one line from Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "Letter to NY." To refresh your memory, a golden shovel uses each word of the chosen line as the last word of new lines in a new poem while still maintaining some connection, or conversation, with the original poem. (A more in-depth explanation and history can be found here.)
I wasn't familiar with Letter to NY (maybe you aren't either; if so, please read it here.) On first glance, I found that Bishop wrote a rather sad, cynical take on a relationship that seems to have been tarnished over time.
Here's a hint of that sadness:
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl
For me, the line choices were hard to re-imagine in a new context. (For example, using the perfectly wonderful in context "where you are going and what you are doing" as end words in a new poem seemed to be asking for a vague mess.) So, I just picked a line that had interesting words in it, and fiddled around. (Most of poetry is fiddling around, right?) And in the end, I found I'd written a poem that maintained a connection with the original by writing about the beginning of this fictional relationship, instead of its sad present state.
The line I chose: "and the meter glares like a moral owl"
The golden shovel I created, with still a hint of foreboding (I hope)
In the beginning
The conversation is poetry: you and
me, dropping words into the
snapping fire, not measuring meter
yet, not forcing rhyme, our bashful glares
into the flames heroically funny like
we weren’t feeling the rising heat; a
log cracks, loudly, expending its moral
energy, but we lustfully ignore it—and the watching owl.
-----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)
You can find my poetry sisters' golden shovels here:
Mary Lee
Poetry Friday is hosted today by the wonderful Karen Edmisten.
