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Friday, September 24, 2021

Poetry Friday: Tankas in Conversation

September's challenge was nothing much: simply peruse years of my dear poetry sisters' archives and write a tanka in response to one of them. (Tanka = a haiku with two added seven syllable lines. See Kelly's informative posts for a deeper explanation.)

Well. That went as well as you'd expect. I flailed in a sea of gorgeous choices. I mired in indecision. I gave up on equity and justice and fairness to all my sisters, and picked two poems. One because I'd missed commenting on it the first time it was posted (sorry, Liz!) and the other because she wrote of sunrises and birds (thanks, Laura!) and I'd just come from Kiawah Island, where I'd also communed with both.

First, here is Laura's #poemsketch. I adore her easy way with lines (both drawn and written) and her knack for evocative detail.

And here is my tanka in response:

Next, a stunning poem from Liz. She wrote it in response to our challenge to write about "Ponderous, or based on an image of a hippo; written in any form"---a challenge I LOVED, by the way, but somehow, I failed to comment upon Liz's killer poem when she posted it back in September of last year. Here's a taste:

Stones in the River
When she was seven
and everyone had
make-believe friends
and make believe families
and make believe long hair,
my sister had hippos,
two make-believe hippos,
(go read the rest here. You really don't want to miss it.)

And my tanka, in conversation:

What a poet wants

what all of us want:
salt, honey, territory
a push upwards, grace
seven ways to carve rivers
names for the things that surface

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

My poetry sisters' tanka can be found here:

Poetry Friday is hosted today by our own Laura Purdie Salas.

Friday, August 27, 2021

Poetry Friday: Deeper Wisdom Poems

August's poetry challenge is so simple that it beckons you to come play: Write a poem in the style of Jane Yolen's What the Bear Knows.

If you click on the link, you'll see that Jane's poem is direct and profound. It features short lines that rhyme, every other one. Lovely.

Alternatively, Joyce Sidman offers us another model for this kind of poem. In hers, she asks: What Does the _______ Know? before each of two stanzas, answering the question in three rhyming lines. She calls these Deeper Wisdom poems.

I decided to try both models, and opted out of rhyme for the first one. Each is based on my experience last weekend helping a refugee family who had fled with nothing but each other. Our group offered them what we had brought by U-Haul, SUV, and small cars: a sturdy brown couch, Disney-themed sheets for the three girls, a first-aid kit, trash cans, a laptop, kitchen chairs, a roasting pan, Tupperware, cell phones, a tool kit, and much more. One woman brought a child-sized umbrella, which the littlest girl popped over her head immediately, making us all smile. Another woman brought orange roses. And why not?

What do orange roses know?

    Not everything needs assembly.
    Roses aren't just for lovers.
    A bloom is a seed, shared.

What do orange roses know?

Saying tangerine makes you smile.

A stem is sturdiest near the thorns.

Flames of friendship start small.

My own daughter, long ago, with her umbrella

What the Umbrella Knows

You can’t stop the rain.

Open gifts now.

Nothing falls in vain.

The world needs little yellow ducks,

brave in a hurricane.

If you have interest in sponsoring a family, Lutheran Family Services offers support, as well as many other organizations.

My sister poets are having fun with this form, too:

Andi

Laura

Tricia

P.S. If you'd like to play along for September's challenge, here it is:

Choose a poem by someone in the Poetry Friday universe and write a tanka in response or inspired by or in conversation with that poem. Kelly offers a great introduction to the tanka here.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Elizabeth at Unexpected Intersections.

Friday, July 30, 2021

Poetry Friday: The Dichotomy of Villanelles

I wasn't sure about pairing villanelles with the theme of dichotomy. After all, the form is all about repetition, with the first and third lines echoing throughout the nineteen line poem. Didn't that make for an argument of accumulation rather than one of division?

Of course, there are only two end rhymes---a and b---so maybe that could hold some opposites. Or not. I honestly was stumped, and had done zero prep for our ZOOM write-in. But when I opened my document to noodle around during our session, I found a gift---the "dud" line that Linda Mitchell had given me in last month's "clunker exchange:"

"A year, or maybe a century ago"

Hey! That was, if not exactly a dichotomy, at least a contradiction. And as for the idea of time itself, that's also rife with paradoxical tropes...in fact, my first laughable line to pair with the so-called "clunker" was a bona fide stinker:

Does time fly, or does it flow?

Didn't matter. I was headed somewhere. I had words on the page. And eventually, I wrote my way into a villanelle, and perhaps some delicious dichotomy.

A year, or maybe a century ago
we were bitter young; we were freshly old
our hearts a creek in overflow

what we might do, where we might go
too weak to bear, if not be bold
a year, or maybe a century ago

the questions stung, but blow by blow
answers came, not one pre-told
our hearts a creek in overflow

broken neat, we mended calico
embraced by time’s sweet stranglehold
a year, or maybe a century ago

we brightly sunk to yawning low
crested yet in rivulets of shadow-fold
our hearts a creek in overflow

making of the rocky earth an archipelago
unbounded yet, a swelling unconsoled
a year, or maybe a century ago
our hearts a creek in overflow.