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: A Poet by Jane Hirshfield

I think of this one as a writer's blessing . . .

A Poet
by Jane Hirshfield

She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not; she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
Read the rest here

For more pictures of what working spaces look like, my book club friend, Anamaria Anderson, pointed me to this wonderful project: Studio Confidante. It's described as "the little objects which keep people company as they work. The things which silently watch the frustrations and triumphs. Those items which sometimes function as a talisman or charm. What we keep close to us. What inspires us."

Edited to add: in the comments, Julie Larios alerted me to this glimpse from The Guardian into writers' workspaces:  Writers' rooms 

Poetry Friday is hosted by Anastasia Suen at http://6traits.wordpress.com/

Poetry Friday (and Quote of the Day): Jane Hirshfield

A quote . . .

"It's a personal act which reaches outward to everyone because we're not alone. We live in a huge net and web of being, human and non-human and we have obligations towards it but the only way to fulfill them is by doing it from the inside. Not from the head, not from what we're told to do, but to discover for ourselves what needs doing and then start doing it."  ---Jane Hirshfield, as interviewed on Speaking Freely

and a poem . . .

A Hand
by Jane Hirshfield

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb. Nor is it palm and knuckles, not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow, not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins. A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines with their infinite dramas, nor what it has written, not on the page, not on the ecstatic body. Nor is the hand 

The rest here

Poetry Friday is hosted today at Carol's Corner.
This post is part of my Poetry Quote a Day series for National Poetry Month.