2024 progressive poem

 

Today this year's Progressive Poem lands with me. As an ever-changing but pretty consistent group, we've written journeys before--quite a few--but never one that could literally mean the difference between life and death. I'd like to thank Janice who, on Day 3, introduced this whole new dimension with just 11 carefully chosen words.  This poem has STAKES, the kind of stakes that many of us have never had to live through. Today I've tried to give our narrator some more of what they need to make it through, and my lines of four beats have gone double-time in recognition of the urgency.

                                                       ***************

Cradled in stars, our planet sleeps,

clinging to tender dreams of peace

sister moon watches from afar,

singing lunar lullabies of hope.

almost dawn. I walk with others,

keeping close my little brother.

hand in hand, we carry courage

escaping closer to the border

My feet are lightning;

My heart is thunder.

Our pace draws us closer

to a new land of wonder.

I bristle against rough brush—

poppies ahead brighten the browns.

Morning light won’t stay away—

hearts jump at every sound.

I hum my own little song

like ripples in a stream

Humming Mami’s lullaby

reminds me I have her letter

My fingers linger on well-worn creases,

shielding an address, a name, a promise–

Sister Moon will find always us

surrounding us with beams of kindness

But last night as we rested in the dusty field,

worries crept in about matters back home.

I huddled close to my brother. Tears revealed

the no-choice need to escape. I feel grown.

Leaving all I’ve ever known

the tender, heavy, harsh of home.

On to maybes, on to dreams,

on to whispers we hope could be.

But I don't want to whisper! I squeeze Manu's hand.

"¡Más cerca ahora!" Our feet pound the sand. 

 

Thank you very much to Margaret Simon for following in the footsteps of Irene and continuing to organize this project for the last few years. Catch the next couplet tomorrow with Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference--we're more than halfway through this list of intrepid contributors!

April 1 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 2 Jone MacCulloch
April 3 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 4 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
April 5 Irene at Live Your Poem
April 6 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
April 7 Marcie Atkins
April 8 Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a God Forsaken Town
April 9 Karen Eastlund
April 10 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 11 Buffy Silverman
April 12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
April 13 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 14 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
April 15 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 16 Sarah Grace Tuttle
April 17 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
April 18 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
April 19 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
April 20 Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect
April 21 Janet, hosted here at Reflections on the Teche
April 22 Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 23 Tanita Davis at (fiction, instead of lies)
April 24 Molly Hogan at Nix the Comfort Zone
April 25 Joanne Emery at Word Dancer
April 26 Karin Fisher-Golton at Still in Awe
April 27 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
April 28 Dave at Leap of Dave
April 29 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 30 Michelle Kogan at More Art for All

**********

"what do you mean?"

 

Greetings, all. My project this month involves Elfchen, a form I know almost nothing about except what shows up on Wikipedia, and who knows who wrote the Wiki article, or who composed the little guide above that I'm relying on as I start each 11-word poem?  All I know is that I find the content description for Line 4 to be piquantly demanding for a poet.  What do we mean, when we select a thought, an object, a colour, a smell or "the like"? Which two words best express what the word from the first row does?  Where is the word? How is the word? And before we sum up the result or outcome from all this, WHAT DO WE MEAN?  

It's like a devotion, a divination of purpose.

(And for a surprising, you-might-say humanitarian use of the Elfchen, read here.)

My Elfchen are 🌍rescue🌍 Elfchen, aimed at kids.  Here's where I am, with gratitude to those who are following along encouragingly on Instagram and have seen them already.

Thanks for reading, thanks for helping to weave the poetry matrix that is this community, and thanks to Jone Rush MacCulloch for hosting us today!  It will be my turn next week to gather all the good.

without mentioning poetry

Greetings, April Rangers, National Neighbors, Poetry Month Makers! It's good to be here with you and all your projects.  Today I'm writing to a challenge set by fellow Inkling Mary Lee Hahn, most appropriate to the month:

Write a haiku sequence that talks about poetry without mentioning it by name. Here is your mentor text: "The L Word" by Kelly Sargent.

Now, I am of the opinion that what goes unsaid in a poem is an important part--nay, ESSENTIAL part--of the poem's success.  If you tell me everything, then where is the work to be done, where is the smithing of my soul upon the workbench of my brain & body?

[Laura Shovan will be sharing her expertise on this topic at a 2-night Highlights workshop called Breaks, Blank Space, and Gaps: Poetic Gutters in Novels in Verse and Poetry, and while I'm temporarily put off by the word "gutters" and its unsavory connotations, I realize also that gutters are the conduits through which life-giving water flows.]

So I am tickled by any challenge that tells me what I CAN'T say. However, the combination of haiku demands *and* the other requirements did prove (usefully) challenging. Here's how it went.

I only know a little of what the other Inklings will have for us today, so the mystery and the pleasure of soul-smithing with them awaits us all below.

Mary Lee @ A(nother) Year of Reading!

Catherine @ Reading to the Core

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise

Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

And lastly, lo, I am attempting an NPM project which I'm sharing on my Instagram--it's a series of elfchen for kids with a *rescue* theme, hashtagged #NationalPoetryMonth #earthmonth #30days30poems #elfchen.  Here's today's:

Thanks to Irene at Live Your Poem for rounding up our poetry community on this first Friday of NPM!

we weather it

How-dee, how-do?  Cardinal and I are back with the promised pantoum (and not much else), to play along with the Poetry Sisters.  Thanks to them for inviting all of us to join in their hijinks, and thanks to a certain someone for making sure I didn't post the first misguided version of this challenging challenge!

The revision help I got has me thinking once again--especially with the news about the Lee Bennett Hopkins award for THE WONDER HOUSE going to the duo of Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Georgia Heard--about how we poets ought to be outright collab'ing like the pop musicians out there, riffing and mixing and remixing our poems. In fact there are some places that specialize in that: 

https://www.s2fjournal.com/ and one other I saw that I can't find now.

Your thoughts on poems/collections by more than one person?

Thanks to Tricia for hosting us today at The Miss Rumphius Effect.  Can't wait to enjoy the pantoumery!

color like sound - an animal pantoum

Greetings from the land of cherry blossoms! No, I'm not in Japan, but here in the DC area, this time of year is cherry blossom time, and in many neighborhoods nearer than the Jefferson Memorial Boat Basin downtown, swathes of ornamental cherries are doing their thing.

Twenty-five years ago we took our brand new little April Fool, baby Daisy, on her first outing--to the Kenwood neighborhood in Bethesda, MD, where the very grand houses stand on streets lined with some very "ancient" cherry trees. I've checked, and as I remember the weather was pleasantly warm that Easter week, rising to 85* on April 8.  (I note also with great surprise that the clocks changed on April 4 that year, and not 3 weeks earlier on March 9 as this year.  Who decided that, and when?!)  The photo of this event that I carry in my mind is not easily available, but an annual family outing to Kenwood became tradition.  

Yesterday evening Fiona and I squeezed in this year's outing, just the two empty-nexters of us, in unsuitably dark clothing, because after a gorgeous, too-early week of warm spring last week, the temps yesterday were in the blustery 40's, although sunny.  Yes, the cherry blossoms peaked a full 3 weeks earlier this year than 25 years ago. It seems my children's lifespans coincide with the peak of the  Anthropocene, and this is the evidence.

What does any of this have to do with the Poetry Sisters' pantoum challenge for today? [uploads Tanita's graphic]

OH LOOK I AM A WEEK AHEAD.

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...

...

...

Friends, if ever there was evidence that I'm now fully into a new era of life, this is it.  I am AHEAD of a schedule, instead of coming right up against a deadline in a planfully last-minute kind of way, which is how I have organized my time and many activities for the last approximately 40 years.

Please raise a glass with me, because change is good. You will have to wait for my cardinal pantoum until next week (bad news for you; good news for me bc I don't feel like it was quite ready!), and settle today for these: the Kenwood cherry blossom poem and video from PUMPKIN BUTTERFLY.

Thanking Rose for hosting us today at Imagine the Possibilities, and hoping she and her birds will return next week for the cardinal poem!

reintroducing *WHISPERshout Poetry Magazine*

Greetings, poetry people! This week my climate post is swerving slightly to highlight new poems by kids published at WHISPERshout Poetry Magazine.  I started this online journal about a year ago and I believe it's the only magazine in the US publishing work by the youngest kids ages 4-12. Often I can include accompanying artwork or photos of the kids.

I really thought it was a vast untapped opportunity for teachers, librarians, homeschoolers and freelancers like me to guide their young poets towards--kids love to see their work "published" in some form, just like we do!  But I've been surprised that it has been so hard to get submissions; I thought the word would spread more easily.  Still, I've been able to publish at least one issue per month, since there's no shortage of interesting poetry coming out of my own workshops with kids. (Thanks here to Margaret Simon, who has frequently shared poems written by her students.) Maybe I don't know how to use social media well enough to make it work!

In Jan/Feb, I ran two "Weather Words" workshops in which we mixed drama and poetry, acting out BARTHOLOMEW AND THE OOBLECK and writing weather poetry (although of course You Are the Boss of Your Poem and I would never insist that you write only weather poems!). March's first issue of WHISPERshout Poetry Magazine features seven of the poems written during these workshops.

With thanks to our host Tanita (fellow March bday celebrator) and a request to all of you to share the magazine far and wide, below I introduce you to a sample of the next generation of poets and their storm of weather poems. Go read! Comment! Help a young poet submit!

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