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
Leilya Pitre of Louisiana is our host at http://www.ethicalela.com today for our fifth day of #Verselove. You can read her poem here, along with the poem and comments of others. She inspires us to write a date night poem (about a memorable date or a standing date) using sevenlings. To write a sevenling, here is the form:
Think about two contrasting ideas, concepts, people, or events (e.g., good/evil, humor/satire, war/peace, light/darkness, optimist/pessimist, flowers/weeds, etc.)
Write a three-line stanza containing three things about the first one (description or explanation)
Write another three-line stanza containing three other things about the second word. You may oppose the first stanza to the second or try to find some commonalities.
The final line should present a kind of a punchline, a surprise, or an unusual, even oxymoronic conclusion.
Add a title.
Here is my Sevenling: The Swing.
The Swing
I said NO to a third date. NO WAY. NEVER AGAIN. I was running scared, hurt.
But you waited. You asked again: Let's go to the park, sit in the swing.
And God winked on us forever.
Actual swing where he proposed on February 16, 2008
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.
Bryan Ripley Crandall of Connecticut has quite a Magic Box process of turning out nonsense, whimsical poems that make us smile. You can read his full prompt along with the process (this one is loads of fun) and the poems of others here.
Just let words roll off the pen and see what pops up!
Turning the Tables
vintage green stamps in rose-hued sunglasses sewing thimble, dogtag, thumbs of young lasses Cracker Jack prizes trinkets and toys but pencils for scholarly girls and boys crocheted tablecloth clamps stitched by all our Aunt Mabels clothespinned lottery tickets turn all the tables
Last year, Denise Krebs asked me to share what I had done to plan a National Poetry Month celebration in my rural Georgia town. Today, I’m sharing a list prose poem (I think I just totally made that combo form up) of How To Plan A Poetry Event In Your Town. I’m currently, still, and always in the planning stages, so these are some of the things I’ve done to plan this year’s event (and last year’s too). At the end of April, I’ll share a picture tour of these events that began in February this year (we couldn’t wait…). Stay tuned.
Painted canvas in the palette of awakenings poetry – ready for lettering!
21 Steps to a Town Poetry Celebration: A List Prose Poem
1. Ask the local Arts Council to pick a theme that fits your town. Imagine the infinite possibilities when they pick Awakenings after two years of the same theme of Bloom. 2. Say a prayer of thanks that your community works together to make poetry happen and has given you the title The Crazy Poetry Lady. (Move over, Crazy Cat Ladies!) 3. Ask a friend to write a poem on the theme (the one who writes a book instead). 4. When he writes the book, set him up with a poetry reading and book signing event. 5. Ask another local poet to read and sign his new book, too, in the coffee shop. 6. Think back to Fran Haley's post on The Poetry Fox and invite him to town with his Fox suit and his vintage typewriter to bang out poems in under 70 seconds when folks throughout the land give him a word and then watch them be amazed when he stamps it with his little fox paw print, suitable at once for framing. 7. When he agrees to come from North Carolina, create canvases for the Chamber of Commerce windows of all the poets' verses. Paint the backdrops in shades of sunrise awakenings. Pretend you are a New York City window dresser and borrow easels and buy fishing line and eye hooks to hang the artwork, then stand back and wonder if any Crazy Cat Ladies will loan you some poetry cats to curl up in the window display. 8. Set up a Progressive Poetry Walk around the town square (read it in sections on stands). Since people will come throughout the land to see the fox, they’ll need something to read while they wait in the long line. 9. Make YouTube shorts of directions on how to write poetry for those who think they can't. 10. Set up community poetry writing kiosks with QR codes to scan for directions and create a community Padlet to showcase the writing online. 11. Ask the Georgia Poet Laureate to come read her poems in the coffee shop, too. Jump out of your skin with excitement when she sends you two poems that will appear in her new book and allows you to put them on a canvas in the Chamber window. 12. Plan an Open Mic night so those throughout the land can come listen....read.....recite. Note that 2 other community partners planned them without your prompting this year….and smile that your seeds are blooming. Pray your garden will grow and grow theoughout the land. 13. Bask in the glow of what poetry does in a town and a state and a nation and a heart. 14. Invite all your writing group friends to come to 1828 Coffee Company on April 25 at 6:00 to read their poems and drink the best coffee in all the land with you. Because Glenda Funk keeps a suitcase packed and ready, you know. 15. If they can't be here in person, invite them instead to record themselves reading a favorite poem or one they've written and send it to you or upload it to YouTube so you can make a QR code and put it in frames all around your town and throughout the land. 16. Create canvases of their verses to go in the Chamber windows, too, on your theme: awakenings. 17. Wonder why you haven't created a collection and put it out on Amazon. 18. Start a Word document of all the poems you'd put in a poetry collection on your theme. 19. Decide to self publish a short collection and choose a title and create an action plan. 20. Bask in the joy of poetry and all the healing it brings to a heart and a town and a state and a nation and a world and a universe. 21. Don't wonder where you'd be without the gift of poetry. You don't even want to know.
and then wonder if you can rewrite 21 into a poem all its own…..try a Haiku….
you don’t want to know where you’d be without the gifts of life-changing verse
its healing magic reaches in, awakens souls throughout all the land
Logo of an actual writing game changer – squeeze it and watch the magic happen as habits take root!
Cheers for the journey through the Slice of Life Challenge throughout March! Here’s the link if you’d like to read the daily blog posts of writers in this challenge.
I celebrate 3 years of daily blogging today all because the Slice of Life Challenge pushed me along in my thinking that if I could write for a week, I could write for two weeks. If I could write for a month, I could write for two months (I joined #VerseLove on the heels of SOLC). If I could write for two months, I could write every day of my life, as I now do with The Stafford Challenge. And so it began….and continues. Thank you to the Two Writing Teachers for the inspiration to make writing a part of my life every single day and for giving writers voice and space. If I can do this, we can all do this. Writers are born from mindset.
This year’s National Poetry Month (April) poster will feature a line from Lucille Clifton’s poem Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary’s) from her book Quilting: Poems 1987-1990. Today, I’m writing a Golden Shovel poem using the striking line: and may you in your innocence sail through this to that. The striking line appears vertically as ending words on each line.
if only these walls hadn't crumbled and we hadn't pretended, we may have made her proud ~ but you in your striped robe of pious innocence paint fake facades, sail in synthetic superlatives through frilly frippery, oblivious to this truth: she would not have wanted you to carry on like that
Today’s host at http://www.ethicalela.com for the third day of February’s Open Write is Dr. Sarah Donovan, who inspires us to write poems that experiment with broken lines. You can read her prompt here, along with the poems of others.
I took the ghazal form today of 5 couplets with AA BA CA DA EA rhyme scheme and measured meter, reframed the whole form, relaxed the rules and broke the lines as I thought of my mother’s 81st birthday and the moments I’m so glad my camera captured before she left us in December 2015 with Parkinson’s disease. Above, she reads to her great grandson from The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss.
Shaping Future Tense
when nothing else made any sense
when family strangers made you tense
your lap unfolded picture books
that tore down every guarded fence
great grandson's heart and mind you shaped each page a moment so immense
your fingers curled his eyes unfurled his focus on you so intense
when nothing else made any sense picture books wrote future tense
Today, our host at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 2 of February’s Open Write is Linda Mitchell of Virginia. She inspires us today to make a mash-up poem. You can read her prompt here, along with the poems of others. Here is the basic process she describes:
Read two works, perhaps poems you have loved for a long time. Find lines that speak to each other. Take a line from one poem and mash it up against one from the other. See how many lines complement each other as a new work. Write these lines, or copy and paste these lines, into a new work.
My all-time favorite poet is Mary Oliver, and my favorite poem is The Storm, from her collection Dog Songs. My father gave me a book of poetry entitled Poetry’s Plea for Animals by Frances E. Clarke, and in it there is a poem by T. A. Daly entitled Da Pup Een Da Snow, which may have actually inspired Mary Oliver’s poem The Storm. Oliver’s lines are in bold, and Daly’s are not.
Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Margaret Gibson Simon of Louisiana is our host for Day 1 of the February Open Write. She challenges us to write an elfchen, a form she has written almost each day of 2024. You can read her prompt along with (is it elveschen or elfchens that is plural?) here.
She gives us the basic rules:
Elfchen Guidelines: Line 1: One word Line 2: Two words about what the word does. Line 3: Location or place-based description in 3 words. Line 4: Metaphor or deeper meaning in 4 words. Line 5: A new word that somehow summarizes or transforms from the original word.
Here on the farm, we are getting ready for a prescribed burn to prevent wildfires and nourish the soil. After the firebreak was cut and the dogs discovered all the wildlife tracks in the soft red clay earth, I could hardly get them back into the house – – it was like a dessert buffet for them! These walks inspired today’s elfchen.
I was so thrilled when my daughter in law texted me earlier this week to let me know that three of my grandchildren had a tea party with my childhood tea set I passed on to them. These pictures just melt my heart, seeing their little hands hold the cups I once held. What a joy and blessing! I’m also grateful for their mother, who creates special moments for them and shares them with me. She is an absolute treasure, and we love her so much!
Common Threads 