PAD Day 23: Dylan, Captain America, and Fighting Poets

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem with the title "Heart of the _______" or "______ of the Heart."

NPWM: "...  write a poem about, or involving, a superhero..."

PSH: "Write a poem that records a dialogue between two famous poets arguing a point of controversy. "

I combined prompts two and three to write a poem based on a lyric from what is probably my favorite Bob Dylan song, a fever dream of a fantasy narrative featuring a wide cast of characters, including two famous poets. (The superhero enters only in the last stanza. And admittedly, it gets a bit silly with a rather serious subject.)

Clash of the Poets
 
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn,
Everybody’s shouting
“Which side are you on?”
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower…
—Bob Dylan, Desolation Row
 
Part of the charm of that song
is the dizzying anachronisms
and unlikely intersections of characters
like Cinderella and Romeo.
Eliot and Pound weren’t on the Titanic,
and in fact didn’t meet until 1914.
What’s more, they were good friends—
Ezra helped Tom edit The Waste Land.
But they could have clashed over politics—
both were American ex-pats,
but Pound moved to Italy and embraced fascism.
Eliot, a bit of an antisemite himself,
nevertheless had no love for brownshirts,
and there might have laid the rub.
 
So for the sake of setting, leave them on the Titanic,
scrapping in the control room:
“I can’t believe you support Hitler!”
“Well, you don’t love the Jews any more than I do!”
“I won’t be a party to genocide!”
“Who cares? I never liked your poetry anyway!
‘Ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas’?
What does that even mean?”
“ Well, how about ‘petals on a wet black bough’? Seriously?”
 
And here Dylan could introduce another character:
Then in bounds Captain America,
He’s just polished up his shield,
And says to Pound, “I think you’re Red Skull,
You’d better yield….”

(I"ll circle back to do the "heart" prompt later.)

PAD Day 22: Grab the Popcorn

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write an "earth" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. "

PSH: (from Tara Elliott)

1. Choose one from each column (A, B and C below). ...

If you’re daring, use a standard die to help you “roll” your selection.

A: Craft Skill Focus             
1. Allusion
2. Anaphora
3. Simile
4. Metaphor
5. Personifica.0tion
6. Assonance

B: Restrictions
1. One adjective/adverb only
2. No end-stopped lines
3. No articles (a, an, the)
4. No stanza breaks
5. One verb only
6. No alliteration

C: Must Contain
1. A color
2. A scent
3. “thirteen”
4. Sports team or sport
5. A reference to the body
6. The name of a famous poet

2. Set a timer for precisely eleven minutes. You can edit later, but the time constraint during the initial writing will increase your focus.
3. Write. While writing, do NOT edit yourself other than attempting to stay within the constraints you’ve already set. Write the entirety of the eleven minutes. Yes, even if you think you’re finished. Keep writing.
4. Edit your work.

I rolled a die and got 1, 2 and 6. That means I must employ allusions, have no end-stopped lines, and cite the name of a famous poet. I also have to work "earth" and an unlikely conflict into the poem if possible. So here's the result. I expected "Earth" to spawn a poem about conservation or climate change, but instead I ended up in a completely different direction, describing another existential threat, if only imagined. (A line from another poem I allude to is in italics.)

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
 
Spinning with Harryhausen precision, they land on 

the White House lawn, and in an admittedly defensive 

move, vaporize a company of soldiers, while 

scientists and generals try to figure them out, and 

someone’s girlfriend gets hysterical. It’s the same old 

story—the tactic of the exploding plane, the strategy

of the sinking boat—until we cobble together 

a new weapon that forces them to crash spectacularly 

into our monuments, leaving us to marvel at all 

the special effects, and wonder about Skyhook 

and Donald Keyhoe and Area 51, then wander off into 

another scenario, another poem inspired by bad sci-fi, like 

Raab and his giant crab monsters, the second half 

of the double feature, and maybe we can enjoy 

a little more popcorn before the next stanza.

PAD Day 21: Romance on a Boat

Today's prompts:
WBP: "For today's prompt, write a trope poem. For most people, tropes are common plot devices used in certain genres. In romance, for example, the "different worlds" trope brings together two characters from different walks of life and/or cultures...."
NPWM: "...write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color. "
PSH: "First, write a 17-syllable American sentence, as per Allen Ginsberg’s definition.... Then, write down each word of the sentence in order vertically, like an acrostic but with words instead of letters. They will become the first word in each line of a poem.... Extra credit! Add/layer another form on top of it, like a sonnet (if your American sentence is 14 words) or a golden shovel...." (Jim Karetnick)   

An "American Sentence" is simply like a one-line haiku, except it can be about any subject and should form a complete sentence. I already employed the methods of prompts two and three in my Day 14 poem, "Anaphoric One-Line Haiku on Mary Cassatt’s The Boating Party." I focused on the color blue (prevalent in the painting), and I wrote a series of one-line haiku to describe the painting. So I decided to pick the first line as my "American Sentence," even though it's debatable whether it's actually a complete sentence: "blue as the river, choppy on a bright spring day - mind your hat, Madam." It also happens to be exactly fourteen words, so I can take up the "extra credit" challenge and try to turn it into a sonnet. As to the first prompt, the poem itself will reveal the "trope."

Le Tour
 
Blue was her mood when she climbed on his boat,
as blue as April sky. Pierre cast off
the rope. She took ten francs from her blue coat.
 
“River’s not good today,” he said. It’s rough,
choppy.”
                        “I don’t care,” she said. “Please take me
on a city tour. The Seine, its bridges,
a glimpse of Notre Dame. I want to see
bright lights tonight, I want to see the pledges
spring has made with Paris.” So they sailed all
day. She said her name was Jeanne. She did not
mind he kept her company till night would fall.
 
“Your manner is refined,” he said. “Store-bought
hat, fur coat…. I’m a simple fisherman.
Madame, Je t'aime.” And then she touched his hand.

Obviously, I used the old romance novel trope of "lovers from different worlds." The story is inspired, again, by the Cassatt painting, but without the baby. (Maybe that came later.)

I did change "river" to "river's" and "Madam" to "Madame" for the acrostic words, but since those words were also originally mine, I guess that gives me license to do so. 

Also I paid service to the second prompt by mentioning the color blue (again) three times in the first three lines. I broke up the lines to set off the dialog for effect. I know the meter could use some tightening, but I'll work on that later. 

               

PAD Day 20: On Haiku, History, and Getting High

So I just thought of a new poetic form. In honor of today, I call it the "Four-Twenty." It's simply four lines that total twenty syllables. How many syllables are in each line is entirely up to you...man. The subject matter can be anything, although something appropriate to the day (a reference to mind-altering substances, some psychedelic imagery, etc.) would be cool.

Here's my example:

"Dispensary"? Wow.

We've come a long way

from Panama Red

in a nickel bag.

(For the record, I haven't partaken in many years - I'm just getting into the spirit of the day.)

Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem using at least three of the following words - bear, collar, flair, hear, praise, ramble.

NPWM: Write a poem that recounts a historical event. 

PSH: "The Prompt: Birds and Bees Are Better Than Us

The Form: Write three (3) haiku using this prompt."

I combined prompts one and three to create these haiku. Each one contains two words from the word bank:

praise the grizzly bear

with no tackle he swipes

salmon with one paw

collarless cat

rambles through my yard daily

hunting for lunch

radar-eared deer

have a flair for vigilance

and hear what we don't

For the "history" prompt, I'll tell a story I may have told before in poetic form. It's rather narrative (as have been a number of my poems this month - some of the prompts tend to lead one in that direction.) 

Spirit of Glassboro
 
I was sixteen, at a competition in Virginia
with my high school band, when we got the call:
Come back to New Jersey—Johnson and Kosygin
are having a summit in Glassboro, our home town.
We arrived the next day.
 
It was June of ‘67. The Six-Days War in the Mideast
was just winding down. We hustled off our buses,
all starched up in our uniforms, and got in formation
just in time to play from the parking lot
for the dignitaries rolling by in their black limousines.  
My bandmate said he thought he saw Kosygin wave.
 
The President and the Russian Premier met
at Hollybush, the historic home of the college president
on the state college campus, for three days,
talking about Vietnam, the Mideast,
weapons systems, and who knows what.
They came out to address us, the people crowded 

on the grounds, while news cameras and reporters
swarmed everywhere. We gave the two leaders

a warm reception, reflecting well on us folks
from the “sleepy little college town,”
as the press liked to describe us.
 
In the end, not much was really accomplished,

but the Cold War may have thawed just a little.
And no matter what it meant to the annals of history,
it meant something to me that I was there.

PAD Day 19: Like a Snake

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write an "emotion" poem (with the emotion as the title.)

NPWM: "What are you haunted by, or what haunts you? Write a poem responding to this question. Then change the word haunt to hunt."

PSH: "Write a poem that provides an unbearably in-depth description of an everyday task, such as getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, or tying your shoes. How much meaning can you mine by really considering an activity you normally take for granted? What will you learn? Where will the poem lead?" (Robert Wynne)

And here is my response to all three. (I took the second peompt to mean: Replace the word "haunt" with "hunt.")

Dread
 
At 10:30 every evening I take a pill.
It's oval and pink and too big for me
to swallow, so I break it in half.
I take it with a glass of cold water
or ice tea. Sometimes it sticks
in my gullet and I have to
gulp down some extra liquid. 
Since I must take it with food,
I have a snack - some pretzels,
half a bagel, or cheese and crackers.
Usually I do it while watching TV.
I've been doing it for almost three years.
 
It fends off that which has hunted me—
that tumor growing on the outside
of my intestine that they only caught
while looking for something else.
It seems they got it just in time,
cut it out without too much trouble
and sewed me back up whole inside.
But cancer is like a snake, a friend told me.
It can always come back and sneak up behind you.
The pill is my best shot to prevent that snake
from coiling around me again.
Instead of being hunted, I become
the hunter, with my doctor’s help,
scanning the body for trouble spots,
monitoring the blood, being vigilant.
 
I’ve cheated death a few other times—
heart attack, near-electrocution,
missing a deadly car accident by inches.
I’ve been lucky, so I try to be optimistic,
yet I can’t help but let an element of dread
creep in when my guard is down,
when the snake hunts me in my dreams.

PAD Day 18: You Gotta Hand It to Me

First, I want to give a shout-out to Rick Lupert and his excellent website Poetry Super Highway , which I had been aware of but didn't get involved with until the past year or so. Rick has lots going on there, including his current poem-a-day prompt feature. Each week he features two poets and a poem or two from each of them. (You can find my feature in the "Past Poets Archive" for the week of August 14-20, 2023.) He also sponsors contests and the occasional anthology, and he has organized opportunities for poets to "swap" their published books with each other (nationally or internationally) and share any e-books they may have for free. Poetry Super Highway also has a public Facebook page, where poets share news of readings, publications, etc. Some of us poets who are participating in the daily challenge are also posting our new poems there.

Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "pessimistic" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem in which the speaker expresses the desire to be someone or something else, and explains why."

PSH: "Look at your hand. Really look at it. Notice the graph of its fingers, knuckles. Look at both sides. Study the lines a fortune teller would study. Now think about where this hand has been… whom it has touched… when… where. Think back to the kinds of chores and work this hand has done. Hammering? Cooking?Writing? She pauses. Has this hand been in pain? In ecstasy? In embarrassment? You certainly by now have images of your hand you will continue to see as you close your eyes. Close your eyes. Peruse those images. Pick one or more you’d like to write about… or, when you open your eyes, just describe your hand." (James Penha, describing a prompt from Sharon Olds)

Here is my response to the first prompt, a "shadorma", a short form supposedly of Spanish origin with 6 lines and a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5. It's been suggested that the shadorma is an invented form that has been passed off as a historical one, a "hoax" if you will, something like Billy Collins' "paradelle." But it has gained legitimate popularity, and I've already written a few in my career, so here's another one:

Shadorma: Democracy
 
I worry:
our pendulum swings
both ways but
if it goes
too hard and far to the right

will it break our clock?

And here is my poem for the other two prompts:

My Hands
 
My hands have been a pair of dilettantes.
They’ve lived a rather privileged life,
flitting from one activity to another,
done some light carpentry and yard work,
a craft or two, and a lot of writing and typing.
Today there’s not a callus on them;
they are warm and pink and smooth,
years younger than they deserve to look.
 
The only trauma they’ve endured
was on the right wrist, a compound fracture
from a fall off my back steps.
Surgery, bars, plates and pins, and months
of rehab made me almost whole again.
 
A quarter century later, I still have the battle scars—
a vertical line across the inside of the wrist,
two puncture marks on the back of the hand
like a snakebite, another mark on the forearm.
Less range of motion too—pronation, they call it.
I can’t quite turn my wrist completely palm-up,
so lifting things from underneath is hard,
or simply taking change from a cashier.
Other than that, the hand looks as normal
as its southpaw partner.
 
I wonder what my hands would look like
if I were another person, like my father-in-law,
who worked for years in his metal shop,
his hands stained many days with grease and grit
but scrubbed clean before dinner each night.
The only thing he couldn’t change was
half a missing forefinger on the left hand,
from the bite of a shearing machine.
 
Or perhaps my young friend the flautist,
whose hands create such beautiful music.
But she complains of pain and stiffness
in the joints that go all the way up
her arms and shoulders, and therapy
is as much a part of her routine as practice.

Even great music has its price.
 
So yes, I guess I’ll keep these hands—
there’s still a lot they want to do.
 

 I consider this one a draft, really. It's rather prosy and could be a bit shorter. Also, it has a bit of a "pat" ending. But it was an interesting exercise, and I'll probably return later to polish it up.

PAD Day 17: Music on the Brain

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem titled "Not ________."

NPWM: "...write a poem that is inspired by a piece of music, and that shares its title with that piece of music. "

PSH: "Make a haiku with 3 songs that are stuck in your brain." (Gayle Bell)

It's interesting that two of the sources both have music-based prompts today. (And I know for a fact that Poetry Super Highway will have a music-themed prompt coming up next week too.) I wasn't sure how to combine those two, though, so I started with the haiku prompt. I have been listening to a fascinating CD box set called I See You Live on Love Street. It's three discs of music by artists who lived in the late 60's or early 70's in Southern California's Laurel Canyon, which gained quite a reputation as an artists' community. Featured in the box are the likes of Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds,The Mamas and the Papas, Frank Zappa, Warren Zevon, Gram Parsons,The Turtles, Three Dog Night, Fleetwood Mac, and many more, as well as a number of more obscure artists and their songs. Two of the three songs "stuck my brain" are from this collection: Stephen Stills' "Love the One You're With," and "Twelve-Thirty," a cover of The Mamas and the Papas' song by Scott McKenzie (of "If You're Going to San Francisco" fame) - the Mamas and Papas do a different song in the collection. Joni Mitchell doesn't appear in the box (nor do some other famous Laurel Canyon residents, due to contractual issues,) but her song "Ladies of the Canyon" is also stuck in my brain by association. So here is my haiku. (The second line is from a lyric in the song "Twelve-Thirty.")

canyon ladies

say good morning and mean it

and love who they're with

For the other two prompts, I thought of songs that I like whose titles start with the word "Not," and one of my favorites is Bob Dylan's "Not Dark Yet" from his 1997 album Time Out of Mind. It's just a beautifully reflective song about aging and disillusionment, and one of my favorites of his whole catalog. So I listened again to the music and lyrics and came up with my own impressions and interpretation of the message of the song.

Not Dark Yet

It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there. – Bob Dylan
 
I can count more days behind than ahead.
My motor is slowing down and I’m in need of repair.
Today it’s the headlights—I need a cataract removed,
before I slip into clouds and darkness.
 
The sun, that enemy in disguise,
probably caused my foggy lenses, and for sure
some nasty lesions on the skin.
But I want it to stick around a bit longer,
even though it’s lower on the horizon,
and the sky is beginning to catch fire.
 
I’m not ready to pull the shades, not yet.
I’ll let you know when I’m good and ready.

This poem looks like it really wants to be a sonnet. It has a generally loose meter, and it could be easily extended from twelve to fourteen lines. Maybe I'll rework it when I have more time.