PAD Day 3: Summer Memories

 Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "smell" poem, and (2) write a "glosa." A glosa is a poetic form of Spanish origin, where the poet takes a quatrain from one of their favorites works by another poet, then uses the four lines in order as the final line for each of four ten-line stanzas. It therefore becomes a 40-line poem. There is no strict set of rules for rhyme or meter, though the length of the source lines may dictate the length of  lines in the new poem. Also, some follow a rule that the sixth and ninth lines of each stanza should rhyme with the tenth, "borrowed" line. It was interesting to see Maureen Thorson referring to Robert Lee Brewer's Write Better Poetry blog for an explanation of the glosa - it felt kind of "meta" to me. Robert wrote his sample glosa with the aforementioned rhyme scheme but didn't mention it in his explanation of the glosa. I have only written one other glosa in the past, and it too used that rhyme scheme, so I will stick with it.

Also, I used another poetic project for today's prompt. I am currently working on a cycle of poems based on the songs and lyrics of the British rock band Elbow. I've been using lines from their songs as epigraphs, and occasionally even incorporating some lines of lyrics into the poems, so this seemed a perfect fit for writing a glosa.

Return Visit
 
And my sister buzzes through the room
leaving perfume in the air
And that's what triggered this
I come back here from time to time....
―Elbow, "Scattered Black and Whites"
 
Some memories are olfactory―
some say that deep recall remains
the longest in the sense of smell.
These days I rarely sense tobacco
from a pipe, but when I do
it wakes me up, it cuts the gloom
and ricochets me back six decades
to my grandfolks' bungalow―
my grandmom sweeping with her broom,
and my sister buzzes through the room,
 
while in his study, Grandpop puffs
on his meerschaum as he toils
at his desk with paperwork
for clients, their insurance policies,
and he'd go door-to-door collecting
premiums, but always fair.
(Some were just a nickel.) Everyone
in town would know this little man
who puffed along without a care,
leaving perfume in the air.
 
Summer weeks we spent with them,
my sis and I, and we would help
Grandmom tend her roses, feed the squirrels,
Grandpop growing rhubarb, feeding birds.
Friday night was TV on the davenport
and one more smell we couldn't miss,
Jiffy Pop, its silver dome expanding,
the steam escaping from ripped foil,
the popcorn smell a buttery kiss―
and that's what triggered this,
 
the scents of summer with the grands,
popcorn, roses, pipe tobacco.
Not all the memories are sweet―
the bathtime scrubs behind the ears,
the time they force-fed lima beans.
But back when candy cost a dime,
and TV shows were black and white,
there still was innocence around.
The everyday is such a climb―
I come back here from time to time.
 
 

PAD Day 2: Begone, Winter!

 Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "second chance" poem, and (2) write a poem inspired by or using an obscure word from the Twitter account of Haggard Hawks, an apparent lover of wordplay and word origins. His page is quite the rabbit hole for a word lover like me, but I decided to go with a word that seems self-descriptive rather than totally obscure and in need of definition or explanation. The word is "afterwinter", which describes an unseasonably bad or cold winter-like spell of weather when spring is expected - sort of the opposite of "Indian Summer." I played a little with language in this poem, too, by using several more common compound words beginning with "after-". It seems to help make the argument to re-introduce "afterwinter" into everyday language.

Afterwinter
 
What are you doing here in April,
aftershock of last season,
Jack Frost on afterburners,
riding the Jet Stream back in
like an afterthought,
searing new grass with hoar,
lacquering tender blossoms with ice?
 
We don't welcome you like your opposite,
Indian Summer. In the book of seasons,
you don't get to write the afterword.
It's Spring's chapter now,
and you are just a bad aftertaste,
or like snow blindness,
an afterimage burning our eyes.
We defy you with our new wardrobes
of shorts, T-shirts, light jackets,
even as we shiver into the afternoon.
 
So be gone, rogue season!
We'll deal with your aftereffects,
and unlike you, the flowers, grass
and birds will get another chance,

basking in the afterglow of warmer days.
Take whatever you may have forgotten ―
snow squalls, polar vortex, black ice ―
and slam the door shut afterward.
 

PAD Day 1: Feet, Do Your Stuff!

 Today's dual prompts from Write Better Poetry and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write an "F" poem (the title starts with F and is about something that starts with F, and (2) write a prose poem about the body or part of the body, but include an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one "crisp visual image." So here is mine, which was partly inspired by the silly lyric in the epigraph. I had fun with this.

Feet
 
You need feet to stand up straight with,
You need feet to kick your friends,
You need feet to keep your socks up,
And stop your legs from fraying at the ends.
―Bernard Bresslaw
 
They do me a great service, getting me from here to there, so I try not to misuse them ―
I keep one out of the grave and the other out of my mouth, but I can't help myself 

when I dance and they both turn left.

 
I take good care of them, and every six months we go to the podiatrist. They love him―
they enter the office with heels wagging, and come home feeling trimmed and groomed,
filed and feisty, ready to take on a marathon.
 
One day while walking my neighborhood, I encounter a friend who exclaims,
"Look at those gunboats!"
"Where?" I ask. She looks down.
"Your shoes, your feet. I never realized how big they were!"
I am embarrassed, and want to kick her. But I don't. She is right.
Each foot measures a foot.
 
Instead, I take these vessels on a mission, each with a proud crew of five crowded up
near the bow, loading artillery to fire right through the shoe, obliterating everything
in their path―rocks, branches, a buckled slab of sidewalk, so I'll never have to trip again.
 

April 2022 PAD Challenge: "Early Bird"

 I'm back again for the annual Poem-a-Day Challenge, which officially begins tomorrow! I'll be following NaPoWriMo, Maureen Thorson's blog, and Robert Lee Brewer's blog, Write Better Poetry, as usual. Maureen today has an "early bird" prompt, to write a poem in response to a line from Emily Dickinson. She suggested five choices and I used one of them.

It's already been a big year for me poetically: My first-ever full-length poetry collection, The Bungalow of Colorful Aging, has been published! (See my prior post.) It's available through Amazon.com or directly through the publisher at kelsaybooks.com. I also have a new chapbook coming out soon, Knit Our Broken Bones, from Maverick Duck Press, based on the poems I wrote during the November 2020 Chapbook Challenge from Robert Lee Brewer, in a form called hay(na)ku. I'll also be participating in an artist and author festival in my home town this May, and the Collingswood (NJ) Book Festival in October, and I hope to start doing in-person readings again, although I will be part of a virtual reading for Kelsay Books in July. And I'm currently working on a series of poems based on the songs of the British rock band Elbow.

Anyway, here is today's poem:

Survivors

 

To be a Flower, is profound / Responsibility –

Emily Dickinson
 
The weather people warned us:
hard freeze the next two nights,
brutal weather for early spring.
 
Cover or bring in your potted plants,
they said, and as for your flowering trees,
the blossoms may die on the branch.
 
Yet most of my flowers have survived
two nights of frost and cutting north winds -
the crocuses and daffodils still poke their heads
defiantly up from icy ground,
 
and the cherry tree in our yard, though wilted,
hasn't yet shed its pink spring apparel.
 
It's as if they know this year more than ever
that they are responsible for our happiness.

Announcing My New Poetry Book!

 I'm very proud to announce the release of my first full-length collection of poetry, entitled The Bungalow of Colorful Aging, from Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books. I've previously published seven chapbooks, but this is my first full-length volume, 80 pages long, containing 54 poems on a wide range of subjects, most of them written in the past ten years or so. Here are the front and back covers:

I was fortunate to get blurb recommendations from the renowned poet and author Marge Piercy (whose workshops I've taken a couple of times), Writers Digest Poetry Editor Robert Lee Brewer (who's known me and my work for a good 15 years or more, mostly due to my activity on his poetry-writing blog Poetic Asides), and a newer poet friend, Vince Gotera, a professor at University of Northen Iowa and former editor of the North American Review. I've got a lot of positive reaction to the cover art and title as well, and I hope the contents are entertaining and inspiring to those who read it. It was a labor of love to be sure.

The book is $16.50, and is available on Amazon.com, or directly from the publisher at kelsaybooks.com. I also have a limited number of author's copies that I will gladly autograph and send to you for the cover price plus $2.25 shipping and handling. Contact me at jackbugs@comcast.net if you are interested.

Here's a sample poem:

The Photo from M87

for Dr. Katie Bouman

When everything lined up—

your algorithm, the telescope signals—

when you displayed your array of hard drives,

dozens of them, all housing the bits and bytes

and years needed to accomplish this historic task—

when the photo went viral, a fiery iris

around an utterly black pupil, and people

called it many things, like “The Eye of Sauron”—

when we all realized we were staring at

a black hole, 55 million light-years away,

that we were looking into the darkest, densest

power of the universe, where everything

may go in the end, and we realized that you,

a woman not quite thirty (young enough

to be my daughter), were able to bring it to us

from those mind-blowing reaches of space,

and the camera caught you watching a monitor

as the image finally assembled,

and you held your hands to your mouth,

trying in vain to contain your unbridled joy—

that’s the kind of joy I want.

November Chapbook Challenge 2021: Haiku Edition

 Once again I did participate in this year's November Poem-a-day Chapbook Challenge hosted by Robert Lee Brewer on the Poetic Asides website. Although for me it's not usually as intensive as the April Poem-a-day challenge, I try to get involved each year with varying degrees of success. The object is to have enough poems (preferably with a unifying theme) by the end of the month to publish a chapbook. Robert announces winners based to their manuscript submissions but does not publish them. That task is up to the individual poet. My best success was when I wrote poems with a baseball theme in November 2013, which turned into my 2016 chapbook, Hits and Sacrifices, published by Finishing Line Press. I also have submitted a manuscript based on the pandemic-themed poems I wrote last November, in a form called the hay(na)ku. That's been submitted for publication, and if accepted, will probably come out next year. 

This year I wrote 38 haiku and senryu on a general theme of November and autumn. I tried to stick to Robert's daily prompts, at least tangentally. I doubt they will turn into a chapbook, but for what it's worth, here are some of what I think are the best ones I wrote this past month:

[Day 1: write a "correspondence" poem]

Dear November,

thanks for the feathery frost 

paintings on my car

[Day 4: write a "party" poem]

dancing on cold feet -
who invited foggy breath
to this party?

[Day 7: write a "health" poem"]

I'm out of the woods

healthy once again, but now

the leaves are dying

[Day 8, first day of Standard Time: write a poem with the title "______ of the _______." I used the phrase in my first line.]

first day of the change -
we wound all the clocks backward -
where did the sun go?

[Day 11, Veteran's Day: write a "memory" poem]

leaves cascade to ground
as I stop to remember
all of the fallen

[Day 14: write a poem with the title "______ That." I used the phrase in my first line.]

who would have thought that
she'd be in the food bank line
for a free turkey

[Day 19: write a "future" poem]

wild turkeys wander

while their cousins on the farm

face a bleak future

[Day 22: write an animal poem.]

brown rabbit
standing, ears at attention
senses winter

[Day 24: write a "response" poem. This was a kind of response to my own haiku from Day 21.]

handing out hot meals,

angels in the soup kitchen -

cornucopia

[Day 27: write a "remix" poem. I wrote seven haiku that used words I previously used in other haiku this month. This one reused the words "foggy" and "umbrella."]

foggy morning -
I hold up an umbrella
as if it would help

PAD Challenge April 2021: Recap

Another National Poetry Writing Month is in the books, and so is my Poem-a-day Challenge. I think I've been doing this for at least 15 years! I produced 42 poems in April (52 if you count the ten "warmup" poems I wrote in late March.) My poet friend Kendall Bell, however, eclipsed me with 92 in April. Mine were mostly free verse, as usual, but some were written in form. I wrote no sonnets, strangely enough - it's one of my favorite forms, and I usually write at least one or two in April. I did, however, write four general rhymed verses, a blank verse, a sijo, two haiku, a tanka, a skeltonic, a limerick and a limerick sequence, a fib, a rhymed shadorma and a shadorma sequence, a quatern, a triolet, and two golden shovels. I also wrote four ekphrastic poems, several persona poems, and two song parodies.  As always, I'm grateful to Robert Lee Brewer (Write Better Poetry blog on the Writers Digest website) and Maureen Thorson (NaPoWriMo website) for providing daily prompts for inspiration, and special thanks to Maureen for featuring my blog and poem "Laurie" from Day 8.

I regret that I only participated in one (virtual, of course) poetry reading in April. (Shout-out to Cord Moreski and his excellent Couch Poets Collective series.) I hope to be involved in more soon, and who knows, maybe some in-person readings by the end of the year. Another highlight of the month was my poem "Public Apology" featured on Your Daily Poem for April 15. I celebrated a milestone birthday, and received birthday wishes from poet friend Marge Piercy plus a slew of other poet friends and acquaintances. I also got tree care advice from Ted Kooser, and had another pleasant email exchange with friend and mentor Jane Hirshfield. And as usual, my friend Vince Gotera and I dutifully followed each other's blogs and gave each other feedback. (He's working on a "poetry novel" that I can't wait to read.) I want to thank everyone, by the way, who read and responded to my poems in April.

As usual, I've selected a handful of my favorite poems to reprise here, in case you don't want to slog through 30 days or more of blog entries to find the highlights. These favorites may change over time, but they seem to be my darlings right now.


[Day 5 prompts: Write a poem titled "The First _____"; write a poem that uses the "shape" and the first letter of each line of another poem, and write your own poem in that framework.]

The First Year
(after "Today, When I Could Do Nothing" by Jane Hirshfield)
 
This has been a brutal time.
I am still here.
 
I've been lucky enough to dodge disaster,
sanity still intact
through this morning, at least.
 
Are we now seeing the tunnel's bright end?
 
It depends on all of us.
 
I hold out hope
today
and pray
sensible people will prevail.
 
I watched a Cooper's hawk
take down a robin yesterday morning
then feast in my backyard.
 
That robin may have thought it was safe
till talons hooked into it.
 
Scales try to balance
commerce with the risk -
many want to eat out, exercise, drink.
 
Science says, not just yet;
immunity's the key, shots in arms essential.
Watch the numbers and graphs.
 
I saw a red fox lope across my lawn.
Eventually, nature balances itself.
Where do we fit in, and how much longer?
 
Are we even deserving?
Will this be our extinction event?
Hubris can be a fatal flaw.
 
I mask, I wash, I distance.
 
This spring when everything strives to open,
connect, expand
beyond the confines of homes and bubbles,
I tread lightly.


[Day 8 prompts: Write a metaphor poem; write a persona poem in the style of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.]

Laurie
 
Returning from New York that night
we were so full of promise,
we young artists and our teacher,
when our van crashed on the turnpike,
and everything changed in a second.
Some of you were badly hurt,
but it was too much for my fragile frame.
I am sorry, friends, to take such an early exit -
I hope I brought joy in my short time there.
Fifty years on, I see most of you
have led good lives, and that pleases me.
You've navigated the highway well,
that treacherous stretch of road
that can flip us at any moment.


[Day 11 prompts: Write a poem that incorporates one or more prime numbers; write a one-stanza poem that is a "fan letter" to someone famous, and a one-stanza response. 
Eratosthenes (er-a-TOS-the-neez) was a 3rd Century Greek polymath who discovered a way to identify prime numbers called "The Sieve of Eratosthenes," but is more famous for being the first person to accurately estimate the circumference of the Earth.]

Fan Letter, 223 B.C.
 
Eratosthenes, you are so smart -
this letter comes straight from the heart.
It's amazing, I think, that you give
us prime numbers that fall through your sieve.
 
Well, thanks! You know, chances were teeny
that your letter'd  reach me in Cyrene.
Now excuse me while I prove my worth
by measuring the girth of the Earth.


[Day 12 prompts: Use the following words in a poem: great, play, season, race, convict, voice; review two reference sources - Lempriere's Classical Dictionary and The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, then take at least one word, concept or idea from each one and work them into a poem. I used the Greek myth of the war between the Centaurs and the Lapiths, and the science fiction term "space tan."]

Beethoven and Disney in Outer Space
 
Listening to Beethoven's great Pastoral Symphony,
I can't help thinking of the cartoon from Fantasia,
that bucolic romp of mythical characters to the music,
centaurs and unicorns, cherubs and satyrs,
and fat drunken Bacchus, sloshing wine all about,
as they celebrate the spring season, playing and cavorting
till Jupiter crashes the party with a fistful of lightning bolts.
Life wasn't always idyllic for the centaurs, though.
They raised a ruckus after too much wine
at a wedding, which quickly became a small war
with the Lapiths, an altercation they say was incited
by Mars, pissed off that he wasn't invited.
All this rolls around in my head as we pass angry Mars,
racing on our way beyond majestic Jupiter, and from there
heading with conviction toward Alpha Centauri,
our next-nearest star, and its habitable planet.
We are space-tanned and ready to be a new voice
in the universe, challenging the gods.


[Day 13 prompts: Write a "lucky" and/or "unlucky" poem; write a poem in the form of a news article you wish would come out tomorrow.]

Lucky Day
In other news, COVID is done,
world peace prevails, we've banned the gun,
all the poor have been fed,
all the despots are dead,
and my lottery ticket just won!


[Day 15 prompts: Write a poem with the title "_______ Story"; think about a small habit you picked up from one of your parents, and then to write a piece that explores an early memory of your parent engaged in that habit, before shifting into writing about yourself engaging in the same habit.]  

Storm Story
 
When I was little, my mother would tell me
that the thunder in the sky was God
moving the furniture, or the angels bowling.
She hoped this would assuage my fear,
but I couldn't ignore her body language,
especially during an evening storm,
when she'd pace the halls and rooms of our house
in her nightgown like a restless ghost,
smoke trailing behind her from another cigarette.
 
When I was a little older I wanted to be
a meteorologist. The hows and whys of weather
fascinated me, and I documented their changes
with my amateur weather station. I could estimate
the distance of a lightning bolt by the number
of seconds between its flash and boom.
Still, I inherited my mother's fear of thunderstorms.
 
If I were a dog, I'd hide under the bed whimpering
whenever thunder crashes overhead.
I can't sleep through storms at night.
And like a dog, I have a kind of sixth sense -
at the slightest distant rumble or faint flash,
I'm awake, turning on the lights and pacing
through the house, just like my mother.
But I've never smoked.


[Day 24 prompts: Write a "question" poem; take an article about an animal, then substitute the name of the animal with another noun, concrete or abstract, or even a descriptive phrase. Then arrange those edited passages into a poem. I substituted "aging" for "polar bear."]
 
Questions About Aging
 
Q: What is aging?
 A: Aging (ursus canus) is a large bear
with transparent fur that appears white.
It has three eyelids, four inches of body fat,
and a blue tongue.
 
Q: How big is aging?
A: Aging is one of the largest predators in the world,
reaching a length of 6 to 9 feet and a weight
of up to 1300 pounds. It has 42 razor sharp teeth
and sharp-clawed paws the size of dinner plates.
 
Q: Is aging dangerous to humans?
A: Aging is an apex predator, putting it at the top
of the food chain with no natural enemies.
Aging has been known to hunt humans.
It can stalk them and run up to 40 kilometers per hour.
You can try to outrun aging, and you may succeed
for a while, but eventually it will catch up to you.
It is also an excellent swimmer.
 
Q: Is it true that aging screams when it poops?
A: Yes.


[Day 25 prompts: Write a "thought" poem; write an "occasional" poem; that is, a poem written for a specific or special occasion. April 25 is "National Hug a Plumber Day."]

National Hug a Plumber Day
 
I know it seems unlikely, but
one day some person thought,
"I hope they don't think I'm a nut
when I say that we ought
 
to give our favorite plumbers hugs,
those masters of the pipes,
the scrappy gals and hearty lugs
who each day earn their stripes
 
with wet and dirty work, some days
in water to their knees.
Let's have a day to offer praise
and give them all a squeeze!"
 
Of course, that's hard to do this year
with viruses about -
perhaps instead, just give a cheer,
a fist bump or a shout
 
to those who fix our sink and loo,
and sundry leaky bummers.
Let's hope in Twenty-Twenty-Two
we all can hug our plumbers!  


[Day 27 prompt: Write a "believe"and/or "don't believe" poem. I didn't use a second prompt for this one.]

At Four, She Believes in Unicorns
 
An invisible one trots about the house
and whinnies when it's hungry.
She loves to draw them with fat oval torsos
and spindly stick legs, pointy ears and horns
and big smiley faces. Even pictures of horses
in her preschool papers and coloring books
become unicorns, thanks to a magic-wand crayon.
This is how a horse can become blue with a pink mane
and a rainbow-colored spike on its head.
Even unsuspecting zebras and cows can be transformed.
Today she drew me a birthday card with backward Ps
and a Technicolor unicorn. If only I could ride it back
to that magical four-year-old's land
where there was still so much more to believe in.


[Day 29 prompts: Write an "evening" poem; write an "in the window" poem. In other words, imagine yourself looking into a window and describe what you see. This is an ekphrastic poem in response to an Edward Hopper painting.]

Night Windows
 
I am an incidental voyeur
strolling through fallen darkness
in a city of yellow eyes
that I can gaze into
and find a story inside,
 
like the woman I spy
in a third floor walk-up,
getting ready to call it a night.
Her derriere and pink slip flash
in the second of three windows.
 
From the left one, wide open,
a blue curtain billows out
into muggy August air
like a sheer flag or a gesture
of a graceful hand inviting me in.
 
The right window is obscured
by a translucent red shade,
so I can't make out all the details,
but I accept the curtain's invitation
and open the brownstone door.
 
I bound up two flights of stairs
and jiggle the doorknob -
it opens without resistance.
I slink like a cat through the flat
and into the back bedroom.
 
Suddenly she turns
and her eyes widen in surprise.
"You shouldn't leave the door
unlocked and the shades up,"
 I growl.
 
"Oh hi, honey," she laughs nervously .
"You're home early."

Some honorable mentions:

Say Hello to Jazz (Day 1)
Up to Fifty (Day 2)
Baby (Day 3)
again (Day 4)
Bursting (Day 6)
Weekend Warrior (Day 7)
The Answer Squash (Day 18)

Misappointment (Day 23)
Appointments for the Heart (Day 23)
How to Get to Love Park (Day 30)