The Ekphrastic Poem

/0 Comments/in , /by

 

not my batik, by the way, but an image from shutterstock.com

POETRYisEVERTHING‘s prompt for day 9 is to write an Ekphrastic poem, a poem based on a painting or another art form. As Chris explains, the ekphrastic poem can be a response to a painting, or it can give a painting a voice. To read more, you might check out a handout that I found at readwritethink.org.

I make no claims for this. Long day. Long nap in the afternoon.

Keeping the Lights on Late

The batik of the blue city with its orange lights,
its dark moon in a cracked white sky

has hung on the wall of every house I’ve lived in
for 30 years. My older daughters, when toddlers, tore it

from its frame one afternoon while I made their lunch.
Now it’s high up, unassailable,

in the two-story entry. On top of its highest tower,
a lightning rod draws the eye. There are no people ambling

the grid of the streets. But the windows are lit–
writers awake all night, scribbling.

Facing His Fear

/3 Comments/in /by

Image found at http://www.artofmanliness.com/2009/09/10/how-to-be-a-hobo/

I subscribe to AdviceToWriters, which emails me a quote every day. Here’s today’s:

If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle. –Richard Rhodes

 

I’m not sure what this has to do with “hobo” which is the prompt for today’s poem (see my other April 2014 posts for more information). But here’s what I did with it:

What good is fear to to them?
They wake in the dark to cold thicker
than their coats. A tin drum
of fire, safety in numbers, honor
among thieves. They are not thieves.
The road sings a song that is wild,
pure as the foot of a honeybee,
but the road confers no pension,
no medical plan, no paid vacation.
If you envy them, don’t  think that it’s all
vacation (no to-do list,
no itinerary, no meetings),
envy their sky of cherry blossoms,
bed of straw and feedsacks,
smoke of old trains skeining
into blue distance, clack of empty freight cars
a disillusioned Morse code:
this is the dream wrapped
in a promise that things can always get worse,
that around the next bend,
a meadow of bluebells waits.

Skirt or Skirts?

/3 Comments/in /by

I am — honestly — in the last stages of the novel revision, and one of the picky things I worried over today was “skirts or skirt,” as in:

With a flounce of her red skirt (skirts?) beneath her cloak that suggested the young woman she would become in a few short years…

 

My friend Priscilla says this isn’t linguistic — did the Puritans wear skirts (multiple) like Victorians, or just one skirt? Look at pictures, she told me. I finally decided on skirt. I worked about 6 hours today, not all of it on this decision, I promise you — a record for broken-ankle me. I cleaned up 102 pages!

Meanwhile, the prompt for Day 7, over at POETRYisEVERYTHING has to do with Port Townsend and Art Deco lampshades. I imagine that Chris recently visited PT. It seems fair that my poem originates with what I’ve been visiting. And it is in the same spirit — old fashioned.

So here goes.

To Skirt

Here on the skirts of the argument
I shirk the decision, skate
on the fine ice of your scowl,
hide (metaphorically)
in my mother’s skirts,
second-guess, quiver and shake,
all skunk logic, squished,
no escape, still skirting it.

Day 6 / Poem 6

/0 Comments/in , /by

annie cat2So my job this month is to write a poem a day and I’m encouraging you to write, too. It doesn’t have to be good.

Today’s assignment (at POETRYisEVERYTHING) was to write about the name of a pet.

The Pet Cemetery’s First Citizen

Turtle (1998-2003)

The tortoiseshell cat, taken in as a tiny kitten, a furball
with a very loud purr, named Turtle 

(which delighted the children, themselves tiny back then,
and, in their own way, very loud).

Much beloved.

*

I don’t have a picture (on this computer) of Turtle, so I’m posting one of our current “top cat,” Annie-Cat. (Long story about her name.)

Searching for pet poems, I found Maria Popova’s website, Brain Pickings, with a post titled, “Literary Pets: the Cats, Dogs, and Birds Famous Authors Loved.” I hope you’ll enjoy it, too.