Poetry Friday: Exquisite Corpse

Me, circa 1st grade,
looking quizzical 

Hey, friends--this isn't a pop quiz, because I'm giving you the answer, but have you noticed that the Poetry Sisters have a sort-of theme for 2022?  Let me explain: 

Last month, we dipped into the sounds around us and borrowed overheard words to create our poems. This month, we're doing "exquisite corpse" poetry---which has nothing to do with a morgue and everything to do with sharing words as a community. In essence, we divvied up the task of writing a poem by each contributing one line. The twist was that we only saw the line before our own until we all viewed the whole thing on the day of our ZOOM meeting.

That was nervy of us. Would it hang together in any fashion? Would it veer into vagueness or get bogged down in unconnected detail? Would it even be a poem? 

Well, y'all---it worked. It was a poem--a somewhat unbalanced, but beautiful poem. We took time to marvel at it, and to talk about how each line inspired the next, and then....we pulled it apart. No holds barred. We each took the draft we'd created together and made something new from it, on the spot. From individual to community back to individual again. 

Have you guessed the theme now?  I've used the words "community" and "together." Not to mention "borrowed" and "sharing." Okay, and "individual," too, because being part of a community doesn't mean losing yourself as an independent person. Yup. I think you get it: in 2022, we're concentrating on forms that allow us to create in communal ways.  

Sure, the Poetry Sisters have focused on supporting each other and posting together (since April 2008!) but when we also lift the expectation that we must create drafts completely on our own, in our separate poet cubicles, well...the result is...

exquisite.  

I hope you'll explore all the ways my Poetry Sisters took the following communal draft and created a poem that spoke to each of us. First, the draft, loosely based on the "exquisite corpse" ideas in this post, and then my take on it: 

Community Draft

This month, odd one out, running short on days and sleep,
This month, past meets pride, roots ripped from native soil still somehow grow.
The once-bright future dims. Shadows grow
but there, near canyon  rim, in  broken light
the yearling hawk shrieked in futile fury
and the steel-edged clouds looked away
trees bow and bend on a blustery day
that rattles old oak leaves down the street. 

                        -----The  Poetry Sisters

For my take, as I began to work with this poem, I was careful to leave lines intact, and to delicately prune here and there. It felt, after all, not like a corpse, but a body of work, vibrating with life. But the more I played, the more I saw ways this poem could evolve. Change wouldn't destroy it. Neither would curiosity. So...I grew bolder. I moved words around. Then, whole lines. I started looking at each word as a deep well of possibilities, and soon, I was even letting a verb be a noun (wild, huh?) The more I worked, the more empowering and exciting it felt to have these vivid and lovely words supplied to me, a gift that I could use in any way I chose. Thank you, Laura, Mary Lee, Tanita, Andi, Tricia, Liz, and Kelly.  

Still--as free as I felt, I did have a focus: that hawk. To me, he was the "odd one out" in all the best ways, and I wanted to write about him.    

My Poetry Sisters' creations are here:

Tanita

Laura

Liz

Tricia

Andi

Kelly

Mary Lee

Poetry Friday is hosted today by our own Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect. 

Poetry Friday: Overheard

For our first poetry challenge of 2022, we composed "overheard" poems---which, as the name suggests, are created from borrowed material. They are similar to found poems-- but made from oral snippets instead of written ones.  The inspiration came from Susan Thomsen's blog. 

The challenge was clear enough---but when I went looking for material to borrow, I found that overhearing things was not easy in this muffled age of masks and social distancing. And the more I tried to listen in, the more dejected I felt. 

Phooey. 

I missed the easy give and flow of public, un-orchestrated conversation.

I missed conferences, workshops, Kidlit drink nights, retreats.

I  missed these lovelies, pictured below. 

So I wrote about that.  Only one word of this was overheard.  I'll tell you which one at the end.

  

Some of the Poetry Sisters
(August, 2010)

Fantasy

I stand, neck-deep

in the rollicking stream 

of an overbooked hotel lobby

bar, my thighs braced,

minnows of gossip 

flicking my hair. 

I order a bottomless

glass of well-water, clear

as rain on the plain; toast

the flash of the bartender’s 

gold tooth as she catches

my words, first try.

I laugh as three fevered 

discussions stalk

the room like rare griffins,

battering dusty tropes

with their ropy tails

and cavernous beaks.

Our voices pollinate

the air, float 

into anyone’s ears; 

maybe we shout

as the elevator opens

like a levy, spilling

poets into the room:

HEY, old friend!

Afterwards,

I tell the doctor what 

was wrong: I needed words.

And he doesn’t blink,

a dry-eyed unwilling

phoenix, and say: What’s that?

Your knee is worse?

One day...

One unmuffled day.  

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

With thanks to Mary Lee Hahn, who gifted me with one perfect overheard word: muffled. 

What did my poetry sisters do with this challenge? What did they overhear?  Listen in:

Laura

Tricia

Andi

Tanita

Kelly

Liz

Mary Lee

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Irene Latham. 

Poetry Friday: Bells

December's challenge was to write a poem about bells.  Any kind. Any theme. Any form. 

My fellow poets in our ZOOM session had amazing ideas, about clever bell metaphors, and delicate bell sounds, and astounding bell stories.  And I had nothing but the vague feeling that I was dancing on the surface of a very deep ocean. Maybe it was because the older I grow, the more I realize how much I don't know---about bells or anything else. 

So I decided to write about that not knowing (which begins with not noticing) and for my form-- 

I took the shape of this tower:

Robert A. Taft Memorial and Carillon

What does a democracy have to do

to get noticed in this town? 

 

How could I—

walking, as I do, in my city—

America’s capitol city—

not notice a hundred-foot shaft

of Tennessee marble, host

to twenty-seven pedal-struck bells?

Not notice

the bells are a carillon— 

(which must, therefore, number

more than twenty-three— 

or be deemed but a chime.)

Not notice the bourdon,

a booming seven tons of bell—

(and also the word for the droning 

largest pipe of a organ, and the word

for bumblebee, and some clever soul

pinched the word for a fizzy drink 

that will—you guessed it— get you buzzed.)

Perhaps because noticing

leads you, on and on, 

(until your ears ring.)

So I walk again to the carillon.

It is true. Solid. There. 

 

Isn’t it?  

After all, these bells

honor President Taft’s son—

(WHO?—well, he served in the Senate, 

I’m told— he sought the Presidency

three times—oh, did he?)

—now I’m on unsteady ground

again—

but—with a bit of noticing—

I see his life rang out to his fellow Senators— 

(this is the Capitol grounds, after all—

and these bells are “a summons

to integrity and courage”)

but noticing this, I feel 

a great silence—

I dig again, to ease

the unease.

Carillons, they say, rose here after war,

an echo of those in Europe

where they were exceedingly noticed,

for the Nazis (hungry for metal)

stole all the bells—(classifying their worth

from Grade A to D) melting

the most unworthy into weapons.

Bells upon bells upon bells

were heaped in Glockenfriedhöfe—

bell cemeteries. 

Oh, how that noticing, now googled,

in hot pursuit of those two words, unearths more—

that (in some cemeteries and times past)

a bell was tucked in with the deceased, in case….

well, you know…someone didn’t

notice they weren’t really dead,

weren’t really lost—

are we?

I walk back to the carillon,

to what we command,

(by Senate Concurrent Resolution 25)

to be sounded with song every July Fourth,

at two in the afternoon.

I’ve never noticed it, you know—

not the *carillonist (chosen

by the Architect of the Capitol)

issuing forth his yearly Anthem,

his America the Beautiful—

wasn't she?

only

the hourly strike,

the daily clamor,

the steady keeping of time—

and not even that, if my mind

is elsewhere—

 

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

*Carillonist is the gender-neutral term.  The current player is male, so he can be called a carillonneur.  

I'm guessing he gets into the tower by this official looking back door: 

My poetry sisters are posting about bells here:

Tricia

Mary Lee

Liz

Laura

Kelly

Andi

Tanita

If you’d like to write to our theme for next month, we are going with “poetry inspired by something overheard.” Our friend Susan Thomsen at Chicken Spaghetti has done several of these as a form of “found poem,” and it seemed like a fun challenge. Here's a link to one of Susan’s poems.

Poetry Friday is hosted today at Carol's Corner.