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Writing with structure and rules is always a challenge for me.
I took some pieces of poems I haven’t been able to finesse yet and make tanka with them. The challenge is both the syllable count and the turning point line. Poets.org describes it this way,
“The Japanese tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as “short song,” and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form.
In many ways, the tanka resembles the sonnet, certainly in terms of treatment of subject. Like the sonnet, the tanka employs a turn, known as a pivotal image, which marks the transition from the examination of an image to the examination of the personal response. This turn is located within the third line, connecting the kami-no-ku, or upper poem, with the shimo-no-ku, or lower poem.”
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5793
Kentucky Warbler
trills and sways the coneflower
calling paler girls
and the memory of a boy
too pretty for me to keep
October that year
I missed the leaves turning gold
and never noticed
corn ripe for the harvester’s slice
just your cool breath on my neck
Coyote trots alone
her red bird meal softly held
limp now in her mouth
nodding our heads as we pass
dawn clocks the start of my shift
night sky a-glitter
breath stealing, gasping grandeur
dizzy dreamin’ time
watch this video from Knate Myers. So beautiful, it hurts.
http://vimeo.com/67084613
Thanks to Bad Astronomy for pointing this out for me.
I must find a place in my house to put this!
http://www.moolka.com/jzv/prod/14840/Djeco/Toys/Room+Decor/Wall+Sticker,+Poetic+Tree
So You Think You Can Dance is back! — the best of the dance and the best competition/reality show IMHO.
a few lines from Yeats to honor the occasion.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
from Among School Children by William Butler Yeats
I attend my first poetry gathering! It was a lovely April afternoon (again… finally!!) at the Crossroads Coffee House in Cross Plains. It was a great venue for the little group – they were hospitable and accommodating. I had very little idea what to expect. I am a little disappointed no one in a beret showed up; I guess I’m going to have to pick up that gauntlet. There were some Birkenstocks, though.
The two stars reading were Marilyn Taylor and David Scherer. Both read for about 20 minutes a great mix of old and newer poetry (even some racy stuff!). Obligingly, both stayed on for the open-mic session where about ten different poets covered a wide range of poetry. A few poets recited other’s works. One gentlemen recited Frost’s Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening from memory and another woman read Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. Both had the crowd chanting along to these favorites.
The other poets read wide-ranging topic’d and sized poems. A first-time reader (with a quirky sense of humor) was also well received.
I learned the protocol and appropriate responses: most poems get a nod with a “mmm.” Funny lines get a chuckle. Applause is given at the end of each reader. And… I am good enough to do this, too. Now that I’ve watched from the shore, it’s time to dive in.
April finally! And a warm-ish day (finally). Although nothing is green, yet. The dafodills are groaning their way through the snow-soaked ground.
I subscribe to a writer’s prompt email from Poets & Writers magazine that regularly offers unique pespective shifts and ideas for writing poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. This week it pushed me more than usual with this prompt:
Poetry Prompt
Choose a poem–a classic work or something you’ve newly discovered–and memorize it. As you do so, note the rhythms, sounds, and structure that help you remember it. To test your memory, and in honor of National Poetry Month, consider reciting it to a friend in person, leaving a recording of it on a friend’s voice mail, or sending an audio file of it to one or more friends via e-mail.
Feeling semi-brave and semi-vulnerable here is a reading of my poem, “Dream of Bamboo.” You will probably have to download it to open it.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2sPw-UzM491OGFUQncyUXdnR1E/edit?usp=sharing
Reading Wherever I Wind Up by R.A. Dickey this morning I come across this line, “Being here reminds me of one of the enduring challenges of living on this side of eternity: how to live fully in the pain of a moment as well as the joy of a moment.”
Practice is sometimes easy for me. The moments when ‘nothing’ is happening or the moments with joy have never taken much discipline or energy. The pain, though, that is the moment my mind pulls out every trick for retreat, distraction, or camouflage. Just reading that line this morning resurrected old pains. Great. Now that is the moment in which I need to stay present.
Now that I’m writing, I’m not in the moment, but a new one. That’s ok. I have to take the time to recommend the book. I’m not a baseball fan, but I am a fan of wisdom. Read it.
My book is now complete in a final draft. I’m looking for a graphic illustrator or artist to help me get my final vision of it complete. I’m proud I stuck to my timeline and have been working steadily to get it to publishing state.
I am changed by the writing of the book. Isn’t that the irony? I set out to change others’ minds and changed my own.
Zen calendar quote a few days ago:
“There are three kinds of disciples: those who impart Zen to others, those who maintain the temples and shrines, and then there are the rice bags and clothes hangars.” Nyogen Senzaki
I listened to a podcast this morning on the treadmill Cheryl Richardson hosting the author Andre Dubus, best know as the author of House of Sand and Fog. I admit I didn’t read the book, but saw the movie. While wonderful, it definitely falls into the category of movies that are too hard to watch again. Anyway…
He listed the numbers of rejections his books had received prior to being published — each time over twenty rejections. House of Sand and Fog was rejected by 28 publishers before it found a home and eventually was sold to make a movie. He encouraged writers not to ever give up!
Most interestingly, they both felt that any time the writer focuses on their reader or the publisher or the goal of selling the work, they have moved out of the creative space and hamper their work. Good advice. For me, working late in the evening enables me to think less and write more clearly.
A common mystery, I think. Last post had me noting Spring, but now Summer’s come and gone here. This morning I went out on the deck (before it started to rain) and the smell of autumn hit me. I seem to love two smells: libraries and autumn. Both are really smells of decay, right? Leaf mold and book pages being inexorably consumed.
Another great feature of Autumn is the brilliant blue skies of October. Out here where it’s fairly flat geophysically, the sky takes up the majority of my view. I’ve been playing around with poem lines that start with, “a sky so big…” hoping to convey my favorite time of year.
Poetiosity 