PAD Day 13: I Confess My Bias

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a "confessional" poem, and 
(2) Write a "riddle" poem.

Well, Robert, you really opened up the flood gates this time. There is a lot of good confessional poetry in the world, but so much more of it is... well, BAD. I wish that would-be poets would stop believing that any heartfelt feeling written down on paper is, by definition, a "poem".  If takes a lot of skill to express one's emotions in poetry without sounding maudlin. So that was the basis of my poem today - not a confessional poem, but one about confessional poetry. I probably exaggerated my feelings on the subject for comic effect, and I've been guilty of an occasional confessional poem myself, so please take my poem in the humorous spirit intended. As far as the "riddle" goes, the opening three lines have a bit of a riddle flavor, but the poem digresses from there. Also, the "acrostic" poem is a kind of riddle (more like a puzzle, I suppose).

An Acrostic Complaint

Could it be a place where one meets a priest?

Or how a contrite criminal feels?

Neither of these, in this case, at least,

For we talk of the poets' reveal:

Everything their poor psyches could hold,

Souls full of anguish and dread,

Suffering, whining, it's all getting old -

I wish they would just go to bed.

O poets, please get over lost love,

Neither Plath nor Sexton you'll be,

And stop writing poems - O, Lord above! -

Like a diary without any key.

PAD Day 12: On Stormy Concerts and Handy Grandpas

Today's judge at Poetic Asides is Kim Addonizio, a very well-known and respected poet who also co-wrote one of my favorite books on the craft, The Poet's Companion, with Dorianne Laux (another daily judge this month).  My son the poet has worked with her in a workshop series in New York and really enjoyed the experience.

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a "damage" poem, and 
(2) Again, I'll let Maureen explain this one:
"Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form.Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.Cut the lines where you see fit and, VOILA! A poem! "   

Well, there wasn't a "voila" moment for me because I couldn't quite seem to get it to work.  The good news is that I did produce two poems in my effort to fit both prompts.  The first was about a favorite place (the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia), and the second about a favorite person (my grandaughter). I think with the first poem, at least, I was able to pare down my language a bit. I wasn't able to part completely with all the "articles and determiners" though - without them all my poem sounded like it was written in a bad Russian accent. I inserted them again, but only where I thought they were necessary, as well as cutting out some adjectives and such.  So at least I got a tighter poem out of it.  The second one was just written "as is".

Storm in a Violin

We dart across Broad Street,

shake and collapse our umbrellas,

and enter the music center.

Lightning flashes through walls of glass.

We ascend stairs to third tier seats

where the venue is  inside a violin -

wood curved inward, then outward

the length of the concert hall.

Above and behind the stage,

organ pipes gleam silver.

On stage, Beethoven's Ninth begins,

with full chorus lined up waiting

to burst into German song.

From this  level, we can see the top

of every head - both French horns are balding. 

As Yannick jumps and thrusts his baton,  

I think about the storm outside.

What if it burst through this space?

The roof caves in, scattering  orchestra,

chorus and audience.  A deluge of rain

fills tuba bells, pummels tympani skins.

Wind blows away sheet music,  knocks over

bass violins, and after a lightning bolt,

all that is left of the first violin

is an overturned chair

and a scorched circle on the  floor. 

But at the moment, the "Ode to Joy" crescendo

is the only storm in here,  and nothing else

is going on in the world.

Handyman

In this toddler's  eyes, everything that comes apart

is broken, and she brings it to me -

"Fix it, Pop-pop."  It could be the torn page

from a picture book, or simply two building blocks

pulled apart. Once, a plastic Easter egg.

As far as she is concerned,

I am the world's greatest handyman.

Once on a walk, we saw a sidewalk slab

broken up and roped off for repair.

"Fix it, Pop-pop," she said. I didn't have the heart

to tell her I don't do concrete work.

But I want to tell her this:

anything I can fix for you,  I will.

If I could keep you from all the damages

of this world, I would.                                                                                                       

                                                                             

PAD Day 11: Sappho and Tornadoes

I'll be brief because it's a busy weekend. Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a seasonal poem, and 
(2) Write a "Sapphic" verse.  Sappho was the Greek poet who invented this form, which I've never done before and is a bit tricky.  I'll let Maureen Thorson describe it:

"These are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee."

Got all that? To put it another way, the stresses fall like this on lines 1-3:
DAH-dum DAH-dum DAH-dum-dum DAH-dum DAH-dum
and like this on line 4:
DAH-dum-dum DAH-dum

Anyway, here's my seasonal Sapphic. I can only imagine what it's like to survive a tornado, like so many of our fellow Americans in the South and Midwest this week, so forgive me any presumptions.

The Gleaning

Spring has zeroed in on us - downdrafts cooking

up tornadoes, hammering little towns like

model train displays - in an instant, nothing

left to hold onto.

Yet we pick through remnants to reassemble

lives - our children's photographs, dishware, jackets,

chairs and spoons, a teddy bear. Are we crying?

Yes, but we're living.

Trees were budding yesterday - now the ones that

stand are stripped like skeletons, winter-bleak and

mourning what this holocaust killed last night in

terrible weather.

As we salvage what we can find, we stumble

over signs of nature surviving - crocus

in a ransacked garden,  a pair of robins

watching us forage.

PAD Day 10: A,B,C,D,E,F,G...

Today I'm giving props to my PAD buddy Vince Gotera. Vince is a professor of English the University of Northern Iowa, editor of the North American Review, and a rather accomplished guitarist as well. We met online during last year's PAD Challenge, for which he was one of the daily guest judges. Vince's Day 9 "visual" poem is an extremely clever piece in the shape of a guitar, in the voice of a guitar.  He also posted  a visual poem by his poetic colleague Thomas Alan Holmes, and two by concrete poet Jan Hodge - all of them are very inventive and make my little Fibonacci from yesterday pale by comparison. You can find them here.

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a poem whose title begins with "How..." (it can even be a word beginning with those letters, like "Howling" or "Howard"), and 
(2) Write an "abecedarian" - poem that uses the letters of the alphabet in order in some way. The classic abecedarian uses 26 words, each successive word starting with each letter of the alphabet in order, A to Z. I've written a few of these, and they are tough to do well - having it make sense is the biggest challenge with such a strict format.  This one I wrote is a little easier, with 26 lines, each starting with a successive letter.  I chose an entirely appropriate topic too, inspired by watching my young granddaughter's intellectual development.

How a Toddler Learns the Alphabet

A

Book

Carried around,

Druidic runes on

Each page,

Fascinates her.

Grandpa reads, she

Hears words.

In time,

Just a little

Knowledge starts to

Loosen the code:

Mmmm goes the M,

Nothing is rounder than

O.

Picking them out,

Quick study,

Reading's not far away:

Snaky S goes ssss,

Tongue-staccato T.

Under the influence of

Vocabulary, growing

Wiser every day.

X marks the spot where a

Young mind consumes with

Zeal.

PAD Day 9: Countdown to Retirement

I don't think I mentioned that I volunteered to help Robert Brewer with the editorial process in this month's Poetic Asides challenge. Last year he had the herculean task of slogging through over 20,000 poetry entries and narrowing them down to 10 a day (300 total) that were worthy of consideration by the guest judges.  This year he wisely recruited fellow poets to help him with all of this, and I will have the distinct privilege of wading through up to 1000 or so entries for a single day later this month. (I won't say which day - that should be a secret.)  Then I will send him the 30 to 50 poems I consider worthy of his consideration, which he will winnow down to 10 finalists to send to that day's guest judge. The ultimate winner, of course, gets to be in the next edition of Poem Your Heart Out, the anthology/craft book he'll publish via Words Dance Press.  So wish me luck separating the wheat from the chaff!

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a "work" poem, and
(2) Write a "visual" poem. Maureen suggests writing a "calligram", a poem that actually takes the shape or image of something. Since posting a poem like that requires a working knowledge of HTML (not my strong suit), I decided to go a different route and write a "Fibonacci" poem - a poem whose syllable count on each line reflects the Fibonacci number sequence, where each number is the sum of the two previous numbers, i.e., 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. The increasingly lengthening lines have a distinct pattern, and a "double Fibonacci" (where the lines decrease again in the same sequence) lends itself well to certain themes and content. So here is my "work Fibonacci". (Actually, I do end it with a "visual" of sorts.)

Retirement Fib

I
can
not wait –
after all
these years of drudging,
my grindstone-rubbed nub of a nose,
after decades of toting barges and lifting bales,
the paperwork alps, surly bosses, water-cooler snarks, meetings and past-due deadlines,
it’s finally time to wind down the clock of career,
put away the pens, pack up the books,
doff the business suit
and slap on
a great
big

PAD Day 8: Two Palinodes (What's a Palinode?)

Well, since you asked, a "palinode" is a poem where the poet retracts a view or sentiment stated in an earlier poem.  The word is from the Greek "palin" (back) and "ode" (song). So today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo are:
(1) Write a "dare" poem, and 
(2) Write a palinode.

I used two poems and wrote palinodes for them.  The first one is really more of an "opposite" to my Day 1 poem, "Pull":

Push

You are not irresistable.

You are not dark chocolate,

popcorn or bacon, a fresh Jersey tomato,

or a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth.

You are not the Beatles or cute baby photos,

and you are certainly not Celtic jigs,

Scarlett Johannson or a sunny spring day.

I am also positive you are not a morning walk

or binge-watching House of Cards.

And I am fairly confident you are not

a Labrador puppy, a butterfly, or NFL football.

Unlike those other things, I push you off

like a magnet trying to touch the same pole.

I dare you - try to get through my field. 

The second poem is a sort of coda to one I wrote a few years ago, "Nine Innings" (published in the baseball journal Spitball). It is a poem of nine stanzas, each with nine lines, each of which has nine syllables - the form was invented by fellow baseball fan Donald Hall. The original poem is an autobiographical take on my life as a Phillies fan, which ended with the Phillies winning the 2008 World Series.  This sequel, as it were, is not so optimistic.

Tenth Inning

Overtime, sudden death, advantage

for the home team. But ours has grown old -

 veterans who won the Series years

ago. Time to rebuild, the GM

says.  Aging stars will go to pasture

while new kids, green and clumsy, try to

fill big shoes. It will be a long year and

a longer decade. Come on, team,  

I dare you - hit a walk-off homer.

PAD Day 7: A Poem by Jane Hirshfield, and One by Little Old Me

As I mentioned before, I will feature poets I know throughout this month of daily blog posts. Today I want to acknowledge my friend Jane Hirshfield, an amazing poet, teacher and mentor who has two new books out - The Beauty, her latest poetry collection; and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, her collection of essays that are a followup of sorts to her last collection, the now-classic Nine Gates. Both are published by Alfred A. Knopf and are available on Amazon.com and elsewhere. Jane is presently enjoying the splendors of Ireland, but she gave me permission to include a poem from her new book here.

My Corkboard
by Jane Hirshfield

However many holes are in you,
always there's room for another.

However much you carry,
you can hold more.

Like a saint making a joke,
imperfection of surface
suits you.
Your seams
remind of quiet tectonic plates.

Chthonic corkboard,
always beneath
even when hung on your vertical side,
your waiting thumbtacks
seem to me
a glittering affection,
the mi casa, su casa
of a door standing open in every weather
of invitation.

I apologize to you, corkboard -
I, who would like
to be more like you in spirit,
cover you over
with maps, plans, bills.

Even these words that praise you
further disguise you.



Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a "love" or "anti-love" poem, and
(2) Write a poem about money.

Not the most original or inspiring prompts, I must say. Robert gives us the love/anti-love prompt every year - I guess some poets look forward to it, but I've already written at least three love poems already this month. Anyway, the combination begs a "love of money" theme, so I couldn't resist:

For Love of Money

I loved Money.  She paid my bills,

showed me a good time on weekends,

helped me get all the things I wanted:

new car, in-ground pool,

McMansion and big-screen TV.

But she felt I was using her – too often

she would leave before the end of the month,

and she didn’t come around as much

when I was out of work. 

I couldn’t find her anywhere –

not at the bank or the ATM,

the casino or the lottery counter. 

Whenever I saw a little of her,

I asked her to buy me some booze,

then she got disgusted and left for good.

Before long, I was begging on the street

for her return, and I would get glimpses

of her in my cup, hard and clanging,

as if to scold me for my downhill slide.

Oh, if only I could have her back

as I remember her – in her sexy green dress,

paper-thin and rustling in my ear

with her throaty whisper: 

Spend me, big boy, spend me good.