Poetry Collection Crisis

Okay, maybe I overshot with "crisis." More like "conundrum." I bookmark poems that I discover online in two ways: I tag them in my Google RSS Reader and, more frequently, I use the social bookmarking site Delicious. Delicious has long been one of my favorite Web 2.0 resources. I think it's brilliant and it's possible that I use it more than any non-Gmail site on the web.

Well, it seems Delicious is on the verge of shutting down and there's no word on whether my 1,500+ bookmarks that range from poems to teaching sites to resource compendiums to Edmonton Oiler blogs will be preserved. Luckily there's another site, Diigo, that offers many of the same things. And it seems like the transition will be secure and easy.

The art of losing, even the trivial things, is certainly not hard to master, but it's rarely fun. So in the spirit of the possible loss of Delicious and my love of List poems and the Monday Poetry Stretch posted at The Miss Rumphius Effect, here's a first draft of a little list poem on Losing.

I Have Lost

That mix tape you made me.

So many pens it's not funny.

My patience way too often.

I blame genetics,
grandfather; your temper 
was legendary.

My grandfather.

A friend or two.

My ability to ignore your absence.

Track of time again.

My memory of adult life without
children. (No need for it.)

Control of this poem.

----

A nod to Word Playgrounds author John O'Connor on this one. I think he features Loss Poems in his wonderful book.

Enter the New Year: Part Two

In my last post, I set forth on my New Year's resolution of blogging more. 60 or so posts in a half a year made for a pretty good debut, but I'd like to do more. My last post also reminded me of another, albeit smaller, resolution I have...to figure out the formatting issues I've been having with my blog posts! When I paste in a poem, the text after it becomes tiny and weird-looking. Very frustrating, but fear not faithful readers, it is a problem I will fix.

Anyway, on to my second, and much more challenging, resolution of writing more. By this I mean writing more poetry. Prose and I will probably never hook up. I am afraid that, at least for now, my dreams of publishing a novel will have to wait. Someday, for sure, but not 2011.

Please enjoy...and let me know what you think...

Enter the New Year


January 2, 2011

enter the too much
the too many attempts
at vows to change to be better
at stopping at quitting at trying
to try again

enter the resolute
movement of days from
trickle to unabated torrent
through aching
grasping fingers

enter the New Year,
flown in on calendar wings
to be better to wash you to clean
you to return you to what
you already were

Our Poetry Walk

After posting my last Poetry Mix Tape, I decided to teach William Carlos Williams's "Between Walls" to my fourth graders. First, we read it. Then we made some observations and they answered some questions about it.

We focused mainly on the fact that Williams is taking something that may seem ordinary and noticing its beauty. That broken glass in that dirty alley might be something you'd walk by without noticing. Williams not only wants us to notice it, he wants us to appreciate it.

So after all this, I wanted to do some writing. But first, we grabbed a digital camera and went for a walk. There's an alley behind our school, which connects to a kind of unique dead end street. We stopped along the way to snap pictures and jot down ideas. Then we came back and wrote poems. Here are a couple:

The Branch of the World
by Jenna

The branch of the world
makes us wonder

Is it born in the world?
You are a very handy tool

The piece makes us happy
while it sits there and dreams

The branch of the world

-------------

Death  Of  A  Funeral  Home
     By  SUHMER

Down   in  a  small  black   alley
  you  see  trees and  plain   leaves

The death of  a funeral  limousine
with a skull  of a lady  inside
with red pedals  falling  on her head

And  down  in  a small  black  alley
you see  trees  and plain leaves
at the death of a funeral  home

--------

And maybe my all-time favorite student-written poem from a fifth grader last year after a poetry walk on the same street:

Monster Jaws

By Claire

In a lot

freezing cold 

a car

sits

It serves

no purpose

poorly rusted

 

its jaws 

agape

waiting,

wanting

something to

devour

 

Monster Car

----------

So I thought I'd try one, too. It's called "ice cold." Here's the picture I took that inspired me:

your non 

sequitur 

stenciled on 

the curb

confounds me

unexpectedly

puts me out

of synch

out of touch

with what

I know 

to be true

An Intro to Haibun

photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14485539@N00/2354473497

I haven't written any poems in awhile. There have been several lines bandying their way through my brain lately but nothing more than that. Just not enough time, I guess. I was intrigued by this week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry, though, so I thought I'd try to find my muse.

The challenge--write a haibun, a composition that combines prose and haiku. The catch--the haibun is supposed to be a travel log. And not just a travel log, but a log of a trip on which you encounter a mythical creature.

Sounds daunting, I know, but I actually had some fun with it. I just sat down and pounded it out, so I'm sure it's a bit rough. But getting something down on paper felt good. I'd never tried to write a prose poem before. I'm not sure if there are rules, but I'm pretty sure there aren't.

As for my quest, I chose a Chimera, a hideous beast known for breathing fire and being an omen of natural disaster. I think I chose it at random, from a Wikipedia list of Greek mythical creatures, although an analysis of my subconscious may reveal otherwise. I don't know. I think I just like the sound of the word chimera.

I pictured a group of warriors out on a journey for weeks and weeks, tracking this beast. Not in hopes of killing her, but in hopes of maybe taming her or at the very least figuring her out. It doesn't end that well, but I tried to contrast the failure of their mission with a more optimistic closing haiku. So, here you go...

Chimera

That cirrus-framed rectangle of the faintest blue ripped in the graying sky was our signal. This ill-fated quest had come to an end, its apocalypse a product of hubris and fate, of misfortune and audacity, and now it was time to end it, to let it all go, to heed the warning and follow our instincts. Away. Away from this washed out villa of mistaken tranquility and inebriated lust, of foolish clingings to time-gone-by and memories of strength no longer possessed. The rectangular gateway: our omen, our message to flee, our oncoming storm, our subconscious--emphasized more by the searing, uncontrollable fires of the Chimera, the very beast we sought to tame, to deconstruct, to make sense of. The very beast incapable of capture (we knew this all along). The very beast that set us on this path.

the four sided sign

of what will never be true

the blueness of hope

A Day of Firsts

As a teacher, today was my first day of school with students. As a parent, I sent two children off to their own first days this morning.  As a teacher, it's an exciting, almost joyous day--a day filled with hope and newness and limitless possibilities. As a parent, it nearly brings me to tears. I don't like the word "bittersweet," but I can't think of no other word that fits these feelings. Watching my children grow up is a wondrous experience, but passing milestones such as this, particularly my son's first day of kindergarten today, can be downright gut-wrenching. Watching them grow up is like watching a miracle unfold before my eyes. But watching them grow up so fast sometimes is enough to make me struggle to catch my breath.

I tried to write a poem for each of the two children that I watched ride away on that school bus this morning. The one I wrote for my daughter, who turns 8 in October, is the one that is close enough to done to share with you today. My son's poem still needs some revision, but I'll share it soon. This poem for my daughter is a work in progress, and far from perfect and far from done, but I needed to post it to kind of get it off my chest.

No Looking Back or How I Know You're Not Little Anymore

for Annabel


I held your hand today
      and it wasn't tiny;
      it's closer now to
      filling my own.

That yellow beast
      ferries you away
      each morning and
      sometimes you don't
      stop to wave from the window.

You take showers.

You answered the phone
      when I called home one
      day and I barely
      recognized your voice.

I embarrassed you at
      that party Saturday when
      I danced in that silly
      way you used to love.

You told me so.

-------


I am fairly certain I could go on and on and on. But I'll leave it at that for now. Don't worry, son, your poem is under construction. Oldest first!

Whitman Re-imagined

I missed the past few weeks responding to the writing prompt over at Big Tent Poetry. This week's challenge was a doozy, so I thought I'd try to get back into the act.

The goal: write a poem placing a pop icon in a mundane, domestic situation. Yikes. If you check out the results, you'll find some fabulous responses: a sordid take on Martha Stewart after dark, Jack Bauer making dinner, and more.

I had a lot of trouble thinking of what to do with this one. So I put kind of a twist on it. I imagined what Walt Whitman would think if he were alive in the year 2010 and working some dead-end office job. Is Uncle Walt the pop icon the Big Tent folks had in mind? Probably not. But I think it works just the same.

-----------------------------

O 2010!
By Ben Curran
(after Whitman)

O me! O life!  Here in perpetuity, confined to endless days a spiral of monotony:
Awake, arise, dress, drive, work, perform, text, review, adjust, count, type, tweet...
Stranded to repeat today and day the next within windowless walls,
One more day tied to these spreadsheets, bound to this net.
One more day confined to this cubicle, tortured by the cursed blinking cursor.
One more day among those that stalk the concrete, bombarded by
    wars on terror, carbon, recession.

Questions abound--Do you ask them, too?
What has brought me here?
What have I become?
What will it take to sever my ties?
From whence comes the strength for escape?

To break free from that which binds my spirit and mind,
To grow my beard and wistfully tread among the flora of the forest:
    Baneberry, chicory, pensternon, more.
To know no obligation to desk nor outlets nor walls.
To dig my hands deep in soil and feel nutrients coursing into me.
To contribute my verse to the pages of the anti-modern world.
To never go back to the trappings of Man.

O me! O life! This new unavoidable question:
What now?
Satchel strapped. Life unplugged. Caution tossed.
Onward toward the answer.

A New Poetry Prompt

Last week, I wrote about the Monday Poetry Stretch, hosted by The Miss Rumphius Effect. I think my first effort was pretty good. I just couldn't hack it this week, though. The challenge was to write about a saying, particularly one repeated in your youth by a parent or grandparent. Two obstacles seemed to stand in my way: drawing a blank on anything repeatedly quoted to me as a child, and not wanting to sound like I was ripping off Hal Sirowitz's brilliant collection, Mother Said. (His poems are hilarious and poignant, by the way. I couldn't find any shared with permission on the web, so you're on your own to seek them out I guess. I'm doing my best to follow copyright rules!)

Anyway, long story short, I stumbled upon a pretty cool site the other day: Big Tent Poetry. Each week they offer up a writing prompt of their own and invite others to share. This week's prompt called for examples of Steganography, which simply put is the "art and science of writing hidden messages" in such a way that none but the sender and intended recipient can understand the message. Um, yeah. I didn't fare too well with that one either.

I really wanted to write about the last race I ran in and how amazingly fast I was and how annoyed I am that I've let my running hobby lapse lately. I couldn't find any sort of code to embed, though. Maybe there is one there, planted by my sub-conscious mind, but I doubt it. So in an effort to be brave and keep sharing my poems, I'm posting it here today and encouraging everyone out there to check out Big Tent Poetry and all they have to offer. In addition to reading some terrific poems that have been submitted, I've also found some great new poetry blogs to follow.

Back Then

Back then I could fly--
back then a mere
nineteen months ago.
One race. Only three miles.
But you know--
held back by nothing--
I could have run fifty
that day.

Since then,
I’ve been
grounded.
Can’t muster
the energy,
the time,
the speed.
You should have seen me
back then.

Tell me it’s time
for another shot.
Another chance
to see what was
there all along.
What is still there
underneath.
Tell me
I can fly again.

 

Poetry Stretch: The Sky

One of my absolute must-follow blogs is The Miss Rumphius Effect. I was drawn to it by its title, inspired by one of my all-time favorite picture books, Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney, and I became a regular reader because of the awesome posts about literacy and poetry.

New followers of my blog should definitely subscribe to The Miss Rumphius Effect and I encourage all of you to take part in the Monday Poetry Stretch, a terrific weekly posting. This week's stretch, called for poems about the sky. Can you write one of your own? Leave it in the comments here or, better yet, at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

To preface my poem, I have to say I have never, ever published a poem of my own for the world to see. Ever. So this is a first. I really enjoyed the revision process as my poem started as one thing and ended as another. Finally, I guess I need to give a nod to Uncle Walt because upon rereading, my poem seems to have a bit of a Learn'd Astronomer kind of vibe. So, thanks Walter. Now, I bring you "Not For Us To Know:"

Not For Us To Know

There is talk amongst us
of what’s above.
Analysis of stars and satellites
and the heavens.
Gaseous nebulae reduced
to formulas.
Predictions of collision and
implosion.
Those sparkling shards--
that darkness--
calling to us, daring us
to unravel the science within.
The unwritten
chapter of the night--
it is not for us to know.

Children’s arms reach upward,
the skies just within their grasp.
They marvel at
the moon’s majestic glow
and worship its light.
They know
the majesty fades
each dawn,
the sequel arrives
each dusk.
There is more
to know. There is no
more to know.

This mystery.
This distant palette.
This celestial regalia.
Ours only to admire,
to wish, to hope,
to imagine.
There is
beauty
in not knowing.