Day 19: Poem in your Pocket Day

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Visit poets.org to see some possibilities for Poem in your Pocket day. I have heard that Elizabeth Austen, our new Washington State poet laureate  will be at the Mount Lake Terrace library at 2:00 this afternoon. (Go to “Events” to find the listing.)

One of the suggestions is to text a poem to all your contacts. This gave me an idea. I’m combining POETRYisEVERYTHING’s prompt, to write a gripe, with a poetry assignment I once gave my students (the ONE time my college allowed me to teach poetry). This assignment was called a HONKU, cribbed, if I remember correctly, from a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” piece about a wave of protest poems, Haiku’s posted on telephone poles, etc. (My students were inspired to write some pretty amazing ones, and they were required to post at least one in a public place.) So here’s a new one from me.

Well, everyone knows that a Haiku plays with syllables…though it doesn’t have to (in English, so I’m told, we can mess with that). I stuck with the formula of 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. The first two lines set up the problem, the final line delivers the protest.

Daughters up all night —
Friends dropping in, shrieks, laughter.
I’m old! I need sleep!

I know, I know, I’m not all that old.

Happy Poem in your Pocket Day.

 

Day 18: My Writing Acrostic

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I learned some things from this prompt, from POETRYisEVERYTHING — so I thought I’d share it on my blog. (I didn’t know that acrostics occur in Proverbs, Psalms, and Lamentations.) You’ll find my acrostic at the end.

PROMPT 18 – Acrostic Poem

Relatively simple acrostics may merely spell out the letters of the alphabet in order; such an acrostic may be called an ‘alphabetical acrostic’ or Abecedarius. These acrostics occur in the first four of the five songs that make up the Book of Lamentations, in the praise of the good wife in Proverbs 31, 10-31, and in Psalms 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119 and 145 of the Hebrew Bible.[3] Notable among the acrostic Psalms are the long Psalm 119, which typically is printed in subsections named after the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each of which is featured in that section; and Psalm 145, which is recited three times a day in the Jewish services. Acrostics prove that the texts in question were originally composed in writing, rather than having existed in oral tradition before being put into writing.

Acrostic poetry was very common in medieval literature and often served to highlight the name of the poet or the patron who paid him. They were also used to make a prayer to a saint. You’ll find alphabet acrostic poems which are called Abecedarius poems in the first four of the five songs that make up the the Book of Lamentations. They praise the good wife in Proverbs. There are many Acrostic Psalms, the most notable is the very long Psalm 119 where each section is named after the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, the final chapter “A Boat, Beneath A Sunny Sky” is an acrostic of the real Alice’s name: Alice Pleasance Liddell. (Good trivia question to ask: What’s Alice’s full name….).

The Poem begins….

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July –

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,

. . . and the poem continues from there…

When the muse moves you,
Runs her hands through your hair, pours
Ice down your spine,
Tickles you until you cry —
It isn’t her call what happens next. It’s yours.
Now is the moment in which to
Gallop in the direction of your dreams.

 

Day 17: Don’t make excuses, make poems…

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The prompt today is to write a poem inspired by hands. (For more details, go to POETRYisEVERYTHING.)

I am reading a novel in which the characters
recognize one another not by their faces,
not by their expressive eyes,
their noses, their lips, not even by height

or the color of their hair or the sound of their voices,
but by their hands. By their hands.
It makes me feel incompetent.
My oldest daughter, I think, knew my hands best,

would scream when anyone else
picked her up. But would I know her hands today,
I mean, if they were all I had to go by?
I’m not sure I could recognize even my own mother

by just her hands. Meanwhile, across from me,
my youngest daughter is learning chords on the guitar.
She knots her left hand over the strings,
a freckle on her index finger.

Her fingers are shorter than mine. The nails
are short, blunt. I ask her to hold up
her hand, to show me her palm,
and she has an X dangling from her lifeline.

She strums E Minor, and then G,
then she looks up and catches me watching her.
She crosses her brown eyes,
sticks out her tongue.

*

No, I am not actually reading such a novel (maybe I will write it). And I am not sure this qualifies as a poem. It could be a prose free-write. Oh, well. Don’t make excuses, make poems! Tomorrow: an acrostic.

Day 16: Ae Freislighe

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Today Chris’s POETRYisEVERYTHING linked me to another blog, elsewhere in the rain, which in turn introduced me to an Irish form, Ae Freislighe (aye-fresh-lee), which has four lines (perhaps more than one stanza) of seven syllables each and an A, B, A, B rhyme scheme. The blogger, Brendan McBreen, further explains that the end rhyming words have a set syllable count: lines 1 and 3, 3 syllables; lines 2 and 4, 2 syllables. The first word or phrase of the poem repeats at the end of the poem. (I’m cribbing most of this from Brendan; see his blog for more details.)

The original prompt was to write a toast. I immediately thought of the Caim blessing(the Celtic Christians had a practice of drawing a circle around what they wished to bless, with stones, or, I imagine, in mind) that hangs on the bulletin board over my washing machine — and so I did a quick Internet search for more such, and found a Celtic Blessings site, which included this little gem:

May those who love us, love us.
And those who don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts;
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles,
So we will know them by their limping.

Maybe you have to have spent 6 weeks on crutches or with your foot elevated to appreciate that fully.

And after all that fuss to introduce you to the ae freislighe form, I’m giving up. We’ll consider it a draft to be revisited.

Inside this Circle 

Blessings on her striped-shirts,
the mis-matched socks, polka-dotted
bras, denim jeans, too-short skirts.
Blessings on what her pockets

hold: hair-ties, chapsticks,
the fortune from a Chinese cookie.
My girl, swift and difficult,
inside this circle, bless and bless.