Erica Johnson of Arkansas is our host today for the 17th day of #VerseLove. You can read her full prompt here as she inspires us to write Echoes from the Past.
Erica explains her process of writing an echo sonnet:
As I told my students, don’t worry too much about the traditional sonnet structure; focus instead on keeping it to a brief conversation of 14 lines between yourself and an “echo” of your choice.
I’ve been down and out with vertigo this week, so the echoes have been loud in between the world spinning.
##!@ ##@* Vertigo Meadows
Green grasses sway and bend and spin (like wind!)
look less like blades, way more like monster fur (sure!)
I’m praying for this vertigo to end (when???)
It’s hard to think when all the world’s a blur (duhrrr!)
Who’s Epley? I get sick from his maneuver (a mover!)
Oh, wait! I jerk my head ~ear crystals shatter (scatter!)
This could be true – a vertigo improver (a soother!)
Just keep a barf bag close so things don’t splatter (it matters!)
Even chirping birds sing sideways songs (gongs)
and baby bunnies loop like Ferris wheels (banana peels)
I need this meadow back how it belongs (it’s all wrong)
my countryside set back on even keels (not these feels)
Our host today at http://www.ethialela.com for Day 10 of #VerseLove2024 is Joanne Emery, who inspires us to borrow ideas and lines from another poem to inspire our own. You can read her full prompt here, along with the poems and comments of others.
She explains her process: Find a line in the poem that stands out to you, expresses something about yourself. Then continue the poem while reflecting how you live your life.
We used Jane Hirschfield’s poem My Life Was the Size of My Life, and I borrowed this line from hers:
and closed its hands, its windows
I also chose one from Joanne’s poem Larger than My Life
Denise Krebs of California is our host today for #VerseLove2024. She inspires us to write List Poems. You can read her full prompt here. I’ve added some pictures, just for fun – – a quick glimpse of our wedding weekend on St. Simons Island, Georgia, where my brother Ken and his bride Jennifer were wed on Saturday afternoon. Narrowing it down to the top ten – – that was a tough challenge!
I love a list poem because it doesn’t have to rhyme, it can be random, and it can be completely out of order or it can run in a countdown fashion to the top of the list. Mine is random, and it’s a photographic prose list poem, a blend of all my favorite kinds. I could not pick a single favorite moment.
Top 10 Wedding Weekend Moments
Straight-from-the-soul smiles on my brother and his bride’s faces, so full of happiness and love,
meeting my brother’s new family and feeling both sides merge into one big family,
getting a new sister-in-law,
placing flowers on the altar in memory of our mothers,
seeing the shoes of my son and husband and feeling them lift me up when I fell,
watching the dads dance – one with a cane, one with bionic knees, but believe it: these two can groove,
watching my brother watch the love of his life come down the aisle,
spending time with extended family and close family (5 of our 6 grandchildren),
figuring out how to win the dinner bill argument with my son since I own nearly one million shares of Shiba Inu (only worth about $25.00 total at .00002 a share, but hey – – it worked),
playing and having a picnic in the parks and hearing my 5 year old grandson’s response when I tried to tell him my ice cream was mashed potatoes and he took the folded arm stance and firmly stated, “that’s impossible!” (they all got ice cream).
Mo Daley of Michigan is our host today for the 8th day of #VerseLove2024, inspiring us to write Zip Odes (an ode to our Zip Codes) by considering our place and our zip code. You can read Mo’s full prompt and the poems and comments of others here.
To write a zip ode, write the numbers of your zip code down the left-hand side of the page. Each number determines the number of words in that line. For a zero, you can leave it blank, insert an emoji or symbol, or use any number of words between 1 and 9.
I thought of the meaning of my name as a connection between where I live and who I am.
From the Royal Fortress Meadow
3 royal fortress meadow
0 =
2 Kimberly‘s meaning
9 green pastures, rolling hillsides, fields full of countryside charms
James Coates is our host today for the 7th day of #VerseLove2024. You can read his full prompt here, along with the poems of others. Today, James inspires us to write poems about a time when everything seemed wonderful and possible, using a form such as a Tanka or Choka. He explains that a Chōka is a Japanese poem of indefinite length, consisting of alternating lines of 5 and 7 syllables, with an extra 7-syllable line at the end.
My brother’s wedding yesterday was all of this and more – everything wonderful and possible- and I can’t wait to write poems and share pictures of the bride and groom once they have shared photos and made their social media announcements first, but I will follow rules of social media etiquette by waiting my turn with permission to reveal photos of their big day. Their dancing recessional out of the church doors brought to mind our own wedding day as we made our way down the aisle after our vows. It went something like this:
Hallelujah!
on my way down the aisle, I leaned into the sound booth and grinned at my brother Let's change the music! Only the recessional.
The Hallelujah Chorus seemed far more fitting
an eleventh-hour switch-hit change at the bottom of the ninth inning might bring a grand-slam homerun
amused wedding guests chuckled three ministers laughed as we made our way into happily ever after
Today’s host of #VerseLove at http://www.ethicalela.com is Wendy Everard of New York, who inspires us to research our favorite writers’ places and our own favorites, and to write a poem inspired by that place. She wrote her poem as she walked around Emily Dickinson’s home and gardens.
I’m the last to the party, crawling up to the word buffet, invitation in hand from Leigh Anne Eck in case this is one of those exclusive shindigs where they ask for ID.
And they might. I’m dragging a leg, my shoes don’t match, my jeans have holes not bought that way, and my hair’s a bedheaded mess. I look like I belong on the set of the Thriller video, and it’s Easter Sunday. It’s way early, we’re half-packed in the camper, and we might be headed out to find a Sunrise service on the lake beach of Callaway Gardens.
But first, coffee. And second, an invitation to continue the writing journey at http://www.ethicalela.com beginning tomorrow, where we will write poetry together each day thoughout April during #VerseLove as we celebrate National Poetry Month. If you’re part of the Slice of Life group, you’ve written for 31 days. You can make it to 61 – just say YES! That’s how I became a daily writer 3 years ago this past February. I’ll be your host tomorrow as we introduce ourselves, and others in this group will be hosting a day on the journey as well. Consider this your personal invitation to the next party.
And third – the buffet of words. Here are my words and expressions, countdown style:
5. tentative consonants (shh-, spp-, smm-)- this is a word combination my eyes didn’t want to leave in Georgia Poet Laureate Chelsea Rathburn‘s poem Returning to My Childhood Library coming out in her new book, defined in her poem as “the soft sounds of someone learning to read.”
4. hush – this word comes from the tipping point poem for me, the one that catapulted a love of poetry to an absolute fixation on it, where the nymph silences the goblin wanting her green glass beads in Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro from Volume 1 Poems and Rhymes, the Childcraft volume with the pink spine band.
3. ceaselessly– my One Little Word for 2023 and 2024 is Pray. This is how we should pray. And also, it’s part of Gatsby’s last words: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. F. Scott Fitzgerald, party animal as he was, is where our dog Fitz (a true transcendental – not a party dog – who came to us with the more fitting name of Henry) got his new name.
2. Tell me – because it’s how Mary Oliver started her (probably) most famous line of all time from her poem The Summer Day. There is a beckoning to know, to tell a tale, to listen as someone shares a plan. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” And it’s why our dog Ollie is named Ollie. It’s at the heart of why we rescue – so we can give our dogs a family and a hope for their one wild and precious life. Ollie eats poetry books – his favorite is anything by Ada Limon. I suspect that what led us to rescue this little dog was divine intervention – I truly believe that he is the reincarnate of one of Mary O’s own little rescues named Percy, for whom she seemed particularly partial in the Oliverist possible way.
1, Hey, Boo! – my cryingest scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, that tender moment when Boo is behind the door…..and Scout (I can’t….I can’t…..I’ll get weepy and I won’t stop)……these are the words that named our dog (abandoned by his previous family, left behind a door, rescued by us) Boo Radley. Boo, who is as white as a ghost and rivals the most damaged of little dogs, who we know without a doubt, despite all of his own random and quirky fears, would pounce on anyone who tried to hurt us if we were dressed as a ham out trick or treating.
Happy Easter, everyone! Hope to see you each day in April and on Tuesdays all year long!
Daily Writers
last day of slicing leads to first day of #VerseLove daily writers born
We celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary today. For a couple of divorcees who found each other a little later in life and had given up on ever marrying again, we realize now that when God winks on love, it’s a dream come true.
There we were, on a swing in a park, where he proposed while wearing a royal blue button-down shirt. There just happened to be a royal blue car driving by with a teenage kid cheering and fist pumping out the window as the love of my life was down on a knee asking for my hand (is there any wonder that I drive a bright blue Caribbean colored RAV4, even though my personality is more of a muted silver or pearly white?).
I think back to that day, on that swing, and count the joys.
A photo of our swing in the reading room of our home
Marriage Proposal Haiku
a swing proposal with a smashed Cracker Jack ring you'd resurrected
and still I said yes with a yes-er yes because you'd fixed the broken
If you’ve never rolled a set of Taylor Mali’s Metaphor Dice, take note: they’re one of the best ways to make poetry accessible for reluctant writers. The red dice are nouns (conceptual, most), white are adjectives, and blue are nouns that represent the direct comparison to the red dice. I rolled the dice:
Naysay Nonet
the truth is a back-handed mirror because once you say to someone to prove your argument's point that they should have called you you can't turn around and not have called them when you should have called
I was three minutes late to work one day last week because I was chasing the sunrise. If you’ve ever been on the backside of nowhere in the rural Georgia countryside between 7:45 and 8:00 just after the time springs forward, you’ve seen it: the most gorgeous glowing coral red sunrise ever, so rich and fiery it could be an over-easy orange yolk of a just-laid Buff Orpington egg, the kind still warm upon cracking into the pan, the kind that mesmerizes folks who’ve never seen a yolk so unhormonally free-ranging fresh, that didn’t come from a carton in a store.
Sometimes that egg yolk sun’ll be right in front of you, as it is when it’s waiting for me like a dog who wants to play chase, right at the end of my eastside driveway first thing in the morning on my way to work. Then, it’s like I’ve tossed it a stick. It takes off to the left when I turn south, then stays left when I head back east, only a little lefter than before. At the stop sign, it’s still left, just not as behindish, and then when I turn back to the south right before I turn back east again, I’m approaching what I know is THE MOST beautiful sunrise ribbon of roadway in the entire county and maybe all of Georgia, maybe even all of the southeastern United States or the world or the universe.
And sometimes I slow waaaaaaay down just to take it all in, if there’s nobody behind me.
Common Threads 