Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Writing Poetry

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”

― Robert Frost

Art by tenth grader Julia Wang from San Jose, California, who has won the inaugural National Poetry Month Poster Contest. Wang’s artwork was selected by contest judges Naomi Shihab Nye and Debbie Millman . . . . It incorporates lines from the poem "An Old Story" by current U. S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.  
 Read more about Wang’s winning artwork.

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

― Aristotle

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."   --William Wordsworth

Allegory of Poetry by Francisco Goya

Midweek Motif ~ Writing Poetry

Writing Poetry is what we do. Why?

According to Jane Hirshfeld: 

"One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn’t know was in you, or in the world. Other forms of writing—scientific papers, political analysis, most journalism—attempt to capture and comprehend something known. Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the unexpected and, with luck, of the unexpectable."   (Read the rest HERE.)

Is she right?  What is a poem? 

Your Challenge:  In a New poem, tell us Why Write Poetry? and/or What Is Poetry?  Consider limiting yourself to addressing one poem rather than generalizing.

🟍

Last Monday, Sherry gave us Poems of the Week ~ Three Poets on Poetry in which Sanaa, Rajani and Sumana answered that question.  Below I provide a few excerpts of the feature:

In POEM HOLDING ITS HEART IN ONE FIST*, Sanaa notes: 
". . . sometimes it’s better to counsel with our hearts alone. 

I have found that pink buds are perfect within  

and destined to open. . . . "

In THE POET HAS GONE, Sumana notes: 

". . . Things of beauty,  
Scattered everywhere 
Like a Mary Oliver page- 
Yet there’s an uncanny calm . . . ."

And in JUST MATH, Rajani notes:

"Even Rumi, who could fit the entire
universe inside his poem, was yearning
for the grace of the Beloved. The universe
is not enough. . . ."

Poetry Is the Gnomic Utterance from Which the Soul Springs, Fluttering

BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

At the podium

measured and grave as a metronome

the (white, male) poet with bald-

gleaming head broods in gnom-

ic syllables on the death

of 12-year-old (black, male) Tamir Rice

shot in a park

by a Cleveland police officer

claiming to believe

the boy’s plastic pistol

was a “real gun”

like his own eager

to discharge and slay

  

while twelve feet away

at the edge

of the bright-lit stage

the (white, female) interpreter

signing for the deaf is stricken

with emotion —

horror, pity, disbelief —

outrage, sorrow —

young-woman face contorted

and eyes spilling tears

like Tamir Rice’s mother

perhaps, or the sister

made to witness

the child’s bleeding out

in the Cleveland park.

We stare

as the interpreter’s fingers

pluck the poet’s words out of the air

like bullets, break open stanzas

tight as conches with the deft

ferocity of a cormo-

rant and render gnome-speech

raw as hurt, as harm,

as human terror

wet-eyed and mouth-grimaced

in horror’s perfect O.

The Parnassus: The whole room shows the four areas of human knowledge:
philosophy, religion, poetry and law, with The Parnassus representing poetry. 
by Rafael (1511)

Poetry

BY LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY

Morn on her rosy couch awoke, 

   Enchantment led the hour, 

And mirth and music drank the dews 

   That freshen’d Beauty’s flower, 

Then from her bower of deep delight, 

   I heard a young girl sing, 

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry, 

   For ’tis a holy thing.’ 

The Sun in noon-day heat rose high, 

   And on the heaving breast, 

I saw a weary pilgrim toil 

   Unpitied and unblest, 

Yet still in trembling measures flow’d 

   Forth from a broken string, 

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry, 

   For ’tis a holy thing.’ 

’Twas night, and Death the curtains drew, 

   ’Mid agony severe, 

While there a willing spirit went 

   Home to a glorious sphere, 

Yet still it sigh’d, even when was spread

   The waiting Angel’s wing, 

‘Oh, speak no ill of poetry, 

   For ’tis a holy thing.’

Skyscrapers

by Matt Haig

I

Like

The Way

That when you

Tilt

Poems

On their side

They

Look like

Miniature

Cities

From

A long way

Away. 

Skyscrapers

Made out

Of

Words.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Temptation)

Moonlight Musings

Surviving April: 
NaPoWriMo and all that 

Well it could be worse. It's not NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month) where would-be novelists must churn out thousands of words a day (not necessarily with much attempt to make them good words). 

I did that one year; which was, well, educational – but never again. After all, I am no novelist; I just wanted to get more idea of what writing one would be like, for the sake of my writing students. I managed it with lots of coffee and chocolate, weight gain, sleep deprivation, and a very obliging husband who did everything else that needed doing. I produced an incredibly bad novel and a great lack of interest in trying to improve it. That was actually my second attempt at a novel. The first, years earlier, soon bored me so much that I abandoned it. If your writing bores YOU, not much hope of it interesting others.

It happens that – for no particular reason – I've never actually done NaPoWriMo, meaning the site of that name from whence prompts issue daily for the month of April. But there are other, similar sites which I have tried. April is National Poetry Month in the USA, which means that online it becomes international (just as NaNoWriMo does, later in the year). Everyone signs up to write a poem a day, at that site and/or various others. For some years I participated at Poetic Asides, but so many people joined in over the years that it became too unwieldy for me. Nowadays I play in much smaller groups, where there is some chance of finding time to read other participants' gems and them read mine – on top of finding time to write a new poem every day.

The aim of NaNoWriMo is not polished work but the completion of fifty thousand words. (Amazingly, some people do produce publishable books.) I suppose it's the same with Poetry Month: the requirement is simply to produce a poem a day. However, we poets do like to make our pieces as good as we can in the time available. It's not the length, it's the poetics! In fact, at Poetic Asides, there are now acclaimed poets judging each month's offerings, and an annual anthology of the winning poems.

I know a number of you do participate in April Poetry Month, at one site or another (or several!) while a number choose not to. I have been making resolutions that this year is my last. I always start off well enough, pleased with new, exciting prompts. Then there comes a time, somewhere past the halfway point, when I find myself writing stuff that seems like drivel. Of course, at a poem a day, they must all be regarded as drafts anyway, but even so.... Readers don't seem to agree with my low estimation of those poems, but The Disempowerer in my head says, 'They are just being kind and polite.' At that point every year I make the same resolution: this is the last year I'll do this.

But then, every year, as we near the end of the month, some gear shifts and I start producing things that I am, to my surprise, very happy with. I even start getting inspired to extra poems that aren't prompted! So then I wonder – what if I just kept on forever, writing poems every day? Would I get really, really good at it? And I put the decision to stop on hold again until next April, by which time I am once more raring to go.

I don't, however, continue writing every day – by the end of the month I am ready for a break and keen to do other things, such as clean the house and weed the garden. Perhaps even get out and about a bit. A month-long commitment, even if it's not for thousands of words of prose, tends to interfere with the rest of life. 'We need some life to put into our art,' I used to tell my writing students, advising them not to chain themselves to their desks. After seven decades of living, I have many memories which I can surely use in my writing, but it isn't quite the same. 

And what about revision? Everyone says it's vital, and I agree. When I'm producing a poem a day, I don't spend much time on revising. Even creating just a few new poems a week, as I respond to the slightly less frequent prompts that happen in other months, leaves little time to revise. Luckily, the problem is the solution. (Well, almost.) Because of writing to prompts – not to mention having been engaged in the making of poems for roughly six decades so far – I get progressively quicker at matters of craft. 

I guess we all do a bit of immediate revision at the point of creation; they are not really FIRST drafts we post. We get adept at producing quite decent poems quite fast. Some enviable people seem always to be outright brilliant! 

All the same, there is delight in returning to an old draft years later – or even a piece one had thought 'finished' – and seeing at a glance just what it needs to become as good as it can get. Or, if it's really in a desperate situation, finding a completely new approach to revive the poor thing. There's even satisfaction in the worst-case scenario, deciding to let some die quietly.  (You know they then become compost for new growth, don't you?) 

Well, it's only one month in the year. Why not go for broke, just one month of the year? (No, don't tell me about November at Poetic Asides, where they not only write a new poem a day all over again, but this time weave them around a theme so as to produce a new chapbook, with the possibility of getting it taken up by a reputable publisher ... I told you not to tell me that!)  

But what is one to do with all those April poems? All those years of April poems? Make chapbooks? Collect them as Christmas presents for friends and family? (The ones who want to read my poems have probably seen them on my blog already.) Just leave them on the blog, letting that be my magnum opus? Take them off the blog soonish (to avoid accusations of prior publication) and/or revise, then submit to prestigious literary journals and anthologies? 

Maybe what to do with them is a different question; anyway it only applies if we do keep producing hundreds of poems every year. The question I am trying to explore here is about the value or otherwise, to us as poets, of participating in Poetry Month. And there is the further question of whether we should – or could – keep up that pace of creation all the time.

I don't know. Perhaps it would be good for me to take a long break from writing new stuff and start some serious revising, even some culling. Perhaps I could make a whole lot of collections around themes? Or forms? (I really fancy the idea of a book of haibun, when I have enough of them.) And yet, not writing new poems at least sometimes would get boring, I think. Creation is exciting!

April Poetry Month is thrilling, challenging, daunting, inconvenient, impractical ... and, unquestionably, productive. This May I do plan to ease off on the writing for a bit. But has it swiftly become such a habit that I'll have withdrawals? We shall see.

And then in June.... Well, you see, some weeks back, before April began, I accepted an invitation to be guest poet for a month at a blog of Aussie poets, where the idea is to post a new draft every day. I must have been mad! At least I have given myself a month in between. And at least they are only supposed to be drafts. (In the habit of quick composition, will I be able to leave my posts as actual first drafts, I wonder, or will I be impelled to tinker?)

I'm glad anyway that we at Poets United have no plans to start hosting our own poetry month. Midweek Motif and the Poetry Pantry, interspersed with articles about poetry and poets, allow for a nice balance between frequency of writing and leisure to craft the work – particularly as we can dip in and out as we like, according to what else is going on in our lives. It allows for those sweet moments when the Muse may whisper in our ears, unprompted.

What do you think, United Poets? Is Poetry Month a blessing or a curse, a chore or great fun? No-one twists our arms, so I guess if we do it, we must really want to.

Feel free to share your thoughts.

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Fool for Poetry

April is national Poetry Month in the USA and in Canada, and poets from everywhere are participating: Are you joining the yearly challenge to write a poem a day in April?   It is not too late to begin.  In the comments below, please let us know where you post and where you find prompts. 

2014 Poster Design: by Chip Kidd, offered by Poets.org from the Academy of American Poets.

The 2014 poster features the lines "Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, / Missing me one place search another, / I stop somewhere waiting for you."
from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself."

~

Midweek Motif ~ Fool for Poetry

It's hard to find positive meanings for the word "fool."  One that can be positive or negative is "To be a fool for something" meaning  to succumb to it, something we are often too logical to do.  That is the motif of Marge Piercy's poem "Toad Dreams" below.  The Tarot card "The Fool" is a positive image that stands for innocence and readiness to experience everything, even if difficult. And then there is the paid job of being a fool--as in a Shakespearean jester or a stand-up comedian or a late-night talk show host.  

Today's challenge:  Write a poem about being a fool or a fool for something, positive or negative.  

At this time of year, I get Spring Fever.  I am a fool for love, nature, and art galleries.  Colors and smells grab me and I dream a lot, willingly, especially of happy endings. And I am a fool for poetry.

“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness 

can be worked out some way. I am a fool.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut

~

Toad dreams

BY MARGE PIERCY

That afternoon the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it.--Henry Thoreau

The dream of toads: we rarely

credit what we consider lesser

life with emotions big as ours,

but we are easily distracted,

abstracted. People sit nibbling ...

Please read the rest of this amazing poem at The Poetry Foundation.

Marge Piercy, "Toad dreams" from Stone, Paper, Knife (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983).  

~

Viola:  This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
 And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
 He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
 The quality of persons, and the time,
 And, like the haggard, cheque at every feather
 That comes before his eye. 

William Shakespeare, from Twelfth Night

~

Please:  

1.      Post your "Fool" poem on your site, and then link it here.

2.      Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 

3.      Leave a comment here.

4.      Honor our community by visiting and commenting on others' poems.

(Next week's Midweek Motif will be Distractions or Stops Along the Way.)

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