Shout-out to a Famous Friend

 I meant to do this during my April PAD posts, but I'm doing it now. I just want to bring to your attention Jane Hirshfield's splendid career retrospective collection of poems published last September, The Asking, from Knopf Press. Here's my Amazon review:

I have been a fan of Jane Hirshfield ever since hearing her read her poem "For What Binds Us" at the Dodge Poetry Festival twenty-some years ago. Until now she has resisted a "collected poems" volume, but finally decided it was time, and we are all the richer for it. This is a wonderful collection that spans a fifty-year career in poetry, from some of her very early work to thirty new pieces, with a generous sampling in-between of her eight previous books of poetry. Throughout these poems, her voice is clear: a passionate love for both humanity and nature, centered by her Zen training, a body of work that is stunningly beautiful with lyrical language and metaphor. In recent years she has become an even more impassioned advocate for Mother Earth, and the newer poems convey both a sense of alarm but also of hope, that things can still be all right if we only pay attention, listen, and act. Jane is truly a citizen of the world, an important voice, and one of our very best contemporary poets. Brava!

I have been friends with Jane since taking her workshop at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in 2011. We've kept up email correspondence over the years, and I've seen her occasionally at poetry events. She has been a source of inspiration, encourgement and advice, and she is a patient, centered and compassionate person, a "good soul," as they say, not to mention a brilliant poet, translator and essayist. I'm blessed to know her. Here is one of the new poems from her collection:

TO BE A PERSON
by Jane Hirshfield

To be a person is an untenable proposition.

Odd of proportion,
upright,
unbalanced of body, feeling, and mind.

Two predator’s eyes
face forward,
yet seem always to be trying to look back.

Unhooved, untaloned fingers
seem to grasp mostly grief and pain.
To create, too often, mostly grief and pain.

Some take,
in witnessed suffering, pleasure.
Some make, of witnessed suffering, beauty.

On the other side —
a creature capable of blushing,
who chooses to spin until dizzy,
likes what is shiny,
demands to stay awake even when sleepy.

Learns what is basic, what acid,
what are stomata, nuclei, jokes,
which birds are flightless.
Learns to play four-handed piano.
To play, when it is needed, one-handed piano.

Hums. Feeds strays.
Says, “All together now, on three.”

To be a person may be possible then, after all.

Or the question may be considered still at least open —
an unused drawer, a pair of waiting workboots.

(From The Asking: New and Selected Poems, by Jane Hirshfield, Knopf Press, 2023. Used with permission of the author.)

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/715681/the-asking-by-jane-hirshfield/

PAD 2024: The Month in Review

 So another Poem-a-day Challenge is in the books, and it was quite a challenge this year because April was a pretty busy month for me personally. At times I lagged a little behind, but in the end I came up with 45 new poems. About half of them were free verse, but I also wrote two prose poems, three  sonnets (including an "American sonnet"), a hay(na)ku string, a limerick, a rhymed quatrain poem, a shadorma, a triolet, a "four-twenty" (a short form I created), a sijo, a tanka, a double senryu, and nine haiku (including a poem that was a series of ten one-line haiku, and an invented form called "area code haiku.")  Thanks again to Robert Lee Brewer and Maureen Thorson for their daily prompts, and to Rick Lupert for sharing prompts he solicited from other poets, including me. It was sometimes daunting to try to meld all three into one poem for the day, but that just meant writing more than one poem a day, which isn't a bad thing.

Here are ten of what I consider my best poems of the month:

Day 5:

Tell Us What You Thought of the Earthquake
 
A six-year old: It felt like I was dancing but my feet weren’t moving.
A science teacher: Cool!
A Californian: You call that an earthquake?
A cat: Who knocked those dishes off the shelves? That’s my job!

A dish: Owwww….
A bird: I think I saw some shivering below.
A worm: Wheeeeee!

A dog: WHAT'S HAPPENING? WHAT'S HAPPENING?
A high-rise building: I waved to the rest of the city.
A train: Ha-ha, they thought it was me.
A bridge: Uh-oh.
The earth: It was only a 4.8. You people better get off my plates
before I really get pissed off!

Day 12:

Mr. Larger-than-Life

Mr. Larger-than-Life caught a train 

with his bare hands
to return to his home town.
He watched the trees whiz by his window,
and grabbed a few,
like toilet brushes in his hands.
He thought about how kind he had been
to all the little people,
how he kept them in a shoebox
and fed and watered them regularly.
 
When he arrived at the station,
and put the train down,
he received a hero’s welcome.
They had a huge reception at the civic auditorium,
just big enough to accommodate his head.
Everyone wore red hats that said,
“I Want to Be Larger-than-Life.”
They gave him the key to the city
which he slipped into his pocket
next to his key to success
and several of the Florida Keys.
He gave a speech about how he built this city
with Legos when he was four,
and how the only way to be as big as him
was to be him.
 
Everyone swooned in his presence or fainted
or shouted until their throats were sore,
until that court case began,
the first of many to cut him down to size.

[Slightly revised since origibal post]

Day 13:

Petrichor

We’ve suffered for so many months under
This drought, the wracked ground cracked as from a quake,
Our crops unsprouted. So we welcome thunder,
Threat and promise, rolling in to shake
Our house. The lightning forking through the sky
Is frightening but welcome too. The rain,
A scatter of big drops, bombards the dry
And kicks up dust at first, but then our plain
Sends up a scent, a mix of salt and earth
And ozone from the air, a sign we’re freed
From thirst and famine. Soon we’ll see rebirth
Of plants and trees, of rivers, even weed.
This thunderstorm, no harbinger of doom,
quenched us instead and brought us sweet perfume.

Day 14:

Anaphoric One-Line Haiku on Mary Cassatt’s The Boating Party
 
blue as the river, choppy on a bright spring day—mind your hat, Madam
 
blue as the wide sash on the waist of the rower—father and husband?
 
blue as his beret, navy and like a sailor’s, as he pulls the oars
 
blue-gray as the dress of the mother awkwardly holding her baby
 
blue as the long socks with brown shoes on the baby who wants to get down
 
blue-white as the sail tacked into the western wind on the brisk river
 
blue as the bright sky on the far opposite bank, dotted with houses
 
blue not as the boat—bright yellow, freshly painted—with its matching oars
 
blue not as the pink suit on the child who gazes fondly at the man
 
blue not as Mom’s hat—white with yellow flowers which still has not blown off

Day 16:

To the First Emperor Penguin Chick to Jump off the Ice Cliff
 
These
legions of

fuzzy little butlers
 
march
resolutely to
the iceberg’s edge,
 
stand
and contemplate
whether to jump.
 
You,
brave leader,
slide right off
 
and
belly-flop
into the sea
 
from
fifty feet
above the surface.
 
Soon
dozens are

leaping, following suit,
 
happily
swimming off
into frigid ocean.
 
I
am afraid
of nearly everything.

Day 20:

The Birds and Bees Are Better Than Us: Three Haiku

praise the grizzly bear

with no tackle he swipes

salmon with one paw

collarless cat

rambles through our neighborhood

on no one's schedule

radar-eared deer

have a flair for vigilance

and hear what we don't

Day 22:

[poem removed] 

Day 24:

A Note from the Ph.D. You Never Got
 
[I]t’s a miracle to have a life. Any life at all.
                                                                —Ellen Bass, Indigo
 
Just wanted you to know I am alive and well,
mounted on the wall of a Rutgers professor
who heads the Psychology Department,
is widely published, and just went Emeritus.
 
I know sometimes you have regrets,
having dropped out after a year of grad school,
but it looks like you have done okay—
your writing, your government service,
a happy marriage, kids and grandkids.
 
Getting me would have taken maximum effort,
but maybe not for maximum return.
You should also know that if you went
down that path, you would have had
an affair in your 40s with a pretty young student
that would have ended your marriage, two sons
who never speak to you, and an accident
on Boylston Street in Boston that would have
left you walking with a cane.
 
And don’t think the Rutgers prof has no regrets—
but I’m not at liberty to discuss them.
 
So you don’t have me on your wall. Big deal.
Instead, there are pictures of your family
and your wife of fifty years.

Day 27:

To the Two Men Who Destroyed Ancient Rocks at Lake Mead
 
Bros, what made you think it was cool
to “trundle” those huge red sandstone rocks
that began to form in dinosaur times
one-hundred-forty million years ago?
You watch with glee as a young girl screams
and they explode to sand on the ground,
ancient marvels, reduced in seconds to dust.
What an example for your daughter,
watching you ruin nature’s antiquities.
Would you dynamite a glacier,
smash stalactites in a cavern with a hammer?
These are Mother Nature’s works of art,
chiseled and polished over eons,
long before you, allegedly, evolved.

Day 30:

The End of Argos’s Google Photo Gallery

The last name is Panoptes, which means “all-seeing,”
which applied to my one hundred eyes,
and my camera as well.
 
Here is Marvel’s The Hulk made entirely of Legos
appearing to push a toddler in a stroller.
 
Here are zookeepers tossing fish to harbor seals
for rolling over, waving their fins, and kissing.
 
Here, blowing bubbles with my grandson.
 
Here are huge flowers of blown glass,
and here is a car door growing from a garden.
 
Here are some Christmas trees.
 
Here is a fishing boat shaped like a shark,
and here is a shark shaped like a school bus.
 
Here is sunset on the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Here is an opossum on my son’s head.
 
Here is a bowl of Italian wedding soup.
 
Here is a white heifer, really a mistress of Zeus,
whom Hera asked me to guard.
 
And here is a shepherd who looks suspiciously
like Hermes, probably sent by Zeus.
His words are making me sleepy,
and he is the last thing my many eyes see.
 
Here is a selfie of Hermes with my head.

 

PAD Day 30: Made It Again!

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "beginning" and/or "ending" poem.

NPWM: "... write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend..."

PSH: "Compose a poem using the photographs on your phone or on display in your home –
Write as if scrolling through them, describing each one briefly....
Keep scrolling and start adding pictures that aren’t there ....
Keep mixing real images with imaginary ones. The poem will tell you how it wants to end." Brendan Constantine)

I combined all three prompts today. It's up to you to figure out which of the photos on my list are real and which are not. 

The End of Argos’s Google Photo Gallery

The last name is Panoptes, which means “all-seeing,”
which applied to my one hundred eyes,
and my camera as well.
 
Here is Marvel’s The Hulk made entirely of Legos
appearing to push a toddler in a stroller.
 
Here are zookeepers tossing fish to harbor seals
for rolling over, waving their fins, and kissing.
 
Here, blowing bubbles with my grandson.
 
Here are huge flowers of blown glass,
and here is a car door growing from a garden.
 
Here are some Christmas trees.
 
Here is a fishing boat shaped like a shark,
and here is a shark shaped like a school bus.
 
Here is sunset on the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Here is an opossum on my son’s head.
 
Here is a bowl of Italian wedding soup.
 
Here is a white heifer, really a mistress of Zeus,
whom Hera asked me to guard.
 
And here is a shepherd who looks suspiciously
like Hermes, probably sent by Zeus.
His words are making me sleepy,
and he is the last thing my many eyes see.
 
Here is a selfie of Hermes with my head.

(I'll be back soon with a summary and highlights of April.)

 

PAD Day 29: Taylor's Sweater

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem titled "Until ________."

NPWM: "Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs....[W]e’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title."

PSH: "Write non-stop for 3 minutes about whatever comes in to your head. Draw a line down the center. Number it section a and section b. Choose one section. Using most if not all the words in that section to make a poem. You can’t use any of the words in the other section but you can add any words other than them to create a new poem." (Judy England-McCarthy)

These are the words that were the result of prompt #3. They sort of became a "word bank" and an "anti-word bank." I did eliminate smaller words that I felt didn't need to be eliminated or included, like the, it, and, on, etc.

USE (list B):
comfortable behold high school sweater indicate area expertise mine maroon gold marching band after life
DON’T USE (list A):
open buttoned everybody least one big letter sewn football gymnastics chess club applique lyre give sweetheart time who would 

I chose Taylor Swift's word "cardigan," the title of her lead single from folklore, her first of two album releases from 2020. (I'm no Swiftie, but I thought those two albums were some of the best music I heard that year.) My free writing prompt was influenced by the word, but I tried not to let the lyrics of the song directly influence the writing. I melded the two title prompts by including both "until" and "cardigan" in my title. 

Until the Cardigan Was Lost
 
Behold the 60s high school sweater,
emblazoned with some alphabetical emblem,
a prize for any girlfriend whose guy’s area
of expertise was usually sports,
a garment she would wrap around herself
as though it were him, comfortable and caring,
warmth that could be adjusted, fastened shut
or not, a knitted billboard indicating
that she was spoken for by a desirable fellow.
How many of those sweater-pledges really lasted?
 
Mine was maroon and gold, the school colors,
awarded for marching band, not the most enviable
of high school credentials, and though there were girls
in my universe I could imagine wearing it,
it wasn’t to be. My true love didn’t appear until later,
after that cardigan was lost, yet somehow
we still both became comfortable and cozy,
and life went on.

PAD Day 28: Kindergarten Karma

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "dead" poem.

NPWM: "...try your hand at writing a sijo. This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise."

PSH: "Think back to your first day of school. Remember the place, the building, the classrooms, the teacher, the other kids. Then try to get in touch with your apprehensions, fears, excitement, the feeling of becoming an adult. Examine how you felt when you let go of your mom’s or dad’s symbolic hand and walked in there alone. Was there a special person you became friends with? A teacher who loved or abused, a yard where you played, made friends or got bullied…" (Rose Mary Boehm)

I'm not sure if I have completely followed the second and third prompts, but here is my sijo. I followed the NPWM examples of translations that break the three lines up into six.

Four-Eyes

First day of kindergarten,

I was already reading,

and the only one with glasses.

Some mean kids called me "Four-eyes."

Now I need cataract surgery

and some of them are dead.

PAD Day 27: Oh, Humanity...

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "remix" poem. (That is, take one of your previous poems and change it up in some way - turn a form poem into a non-form one, or turn its message into its opposite, mix the lines around, etc.)

NPWM: Write an "American Sonnet."

PSH: "Human beings are so pervasive; we insert ourselves in every situation. Write a poem about a time you saw human’s influence in an unexpected place. Bonus points for using an unexpected form (one you don’t use often.)"  (C.W.Bryan)

I'll probably do the "remix" prompt later. (What I have liked to do in the past with that prompt is take individual lines from previous poems I wrote this month and string them together into a new poem.)

The "American Sonnet" is simply a shorter poem of about 14 lines, with very few rules regarding meter or rhyme. It's just supposed to be a discursive poem that captures the general spirit or form of the traditional sonnet. Several famous poets have written what they dub "American Sonnets,", like Billy Collins, Terence Hayes, and Gerald Stern. I often find, when I've written a shorter free verse poem, that it happens to end up being fourteen lines, with maybe an average of ten syllables a line, so some of them could probably be labelled as American sonnets. As to the third prompt, one example that sticks in my mind (and certainly not a positive one) is an incident at a national park that was captured in a now-viral video and made the national news.

To the Two Men Who Destroyed Ancient Rocks at Lake Mead
 
Bros, what made you think it was cool
to “trundle” those huge red sandstone rocks
that began to form in dinosaur times
one-hundred-forty million years ago?
You watch with glee as a young girl screams
and they explode to sand on the ground,
ancient marvels, reduced in seconds to dust.
What an example for your daughter,
watching you ruin nature’s antiquities.
Would you dynamite a glacier,
smash stalactites in a cavern with a hammer?
These are Mother Nature’s works of art,
chiseled and polished over eons,
long before you, allegedly, evolved.

As of this writing, I don't think these two have been identified or caught. Unfortunately, they happened to pick an area for their shenanigans that has already been devastated most likely by man-made climate change: the drought-driven drying of Lake Mead.

PAD Day 26: Poetry Advice from a Platypus

Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "persona" poem.

NPWM: Write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance, and assonance.

PSH: Write a parody to Bukowski's poem "So You Want to Be a Writer.”  (Jackie Chou)

I combined all three prompts today, more or less. Bukowski's poem contains some good, frank advice as well as some dubious advice, in my opinion. My takeoff was more inspired by Bukowski than a parody of his poem.  It's more of a parody of public service announcements and of poets who overuse alliteration. Regarding the second prompt, I did focus more on alliteration than on consonance and assonance, although there are probably (albeit serendipitously) examples of assonance and consonance too.

Be Great, Don’t Alliterate!
 
It’s a persistent problem among poets –
a plethora of surplus consonants littering our landscape.
Particularly perplexing is a preponderance of P’s.
 
In some municipalities it’s illegal to alliterate.
You can be fined up to four-hundred fifty-five dollars
 and forced to collect consonants from culverts, creeks and crevices
with a pointy trash-picker pole. Imagine you in an orange jumpsuit,
sullenly sweeping the shoulder of the roadside.
 
So please, next time you compose a poem,
don’t dump alphabetic detritrus in the dirt.
Take it from me, Penny the Picker-Upper Platypus—
Be Great, Don’t Alliterate!
 
(This public service message sponsored by
the Council for Controlling Consonants
and the Anti-Assonance Association)

 

And here is an AI-generated cartoon of Penny. I think she looks more like a duck than a platypus, and I'm not sure what she's holding in her left hand: