In another article in the News and Trends section of the May/June 2019 Poets&Writers Magazine, called “Sharing Poetry Chapbooks Online,” I discovered a fabulous resource library and place to listen to poets reading. Poets House has been digitizing rare chapbooks of the “Mimeo Revolution” a period stretching from the early 1960s through the mid-1980s when small-press publishing proliferated. I started with Loba, Part 1 by Diane di Prima because I recently enjoyed The Poetry Deal: a film with Diane di Prima on Kanopy.
Below the book on the screen, there is a tab that says AUDIO/VIDEO and when I click on it, I find a recording of Diane di Prima reading the text, so I can listen to the poet read as I read. Talk about poetry immersion.
On the home page of Poets House, under the site title, there is a MEDIA tab. When I click on it, I have options for AUDIO and VIDEO as well as the digital chapbook collection. When I click on AUDIO I find a selection of recorded readings and discussions with poets.
And under VIDEO I found Kwame Dawes reading a poem by his father Neville Dawes called “Acceptance” (A wink back to my A word on April first).
The Prompts
Today is Stream of Consciousness Saturday and Linda Hill’s prompt for today is “ends with “ound.” Find a word (or words) that ends with “ound” and use it any way you’d like.”
NaPoWriMo : Today’s prompt is about word collecting and it looks fun – “Start by creating a “word bank” of ten simple words. They should only have one or two syllables apiece. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three more should be concrete nouns of whatever character you choose (i.e., “bridge,” “sun,” “airplane,” “cat”), and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your ten words. (If you’re having trouble coming up with rhymes, the wonderful Rhymezone is at your service). Use your expanded word-bank, with rhymes, as the seeds for your poem. Your effort doesn’t actually have to rhyme in the sense of having each line end with a rhymed word, but try to use as much soundplay in your poem as possible.”
The NaPoWriMo resource today is the Wild and Precious Life Reading Series on X. I don’t use X, so I couldn’t see the prompts, but on Instagram you can see the prompts without having an account. Today’s prompt is from the Poet’s Companion(assoc. link).
Yesterday I happened upon “Escapril” (also Instagram) and I love that word/concept. Escapril has a list of daily prompts. Today is “purr.”
PAD Challenge : Write a living poem
Poetry Non-stop : Solitude
Poetry Super Highway : Think of a smell you may have recently experienced that had the power to plunge you back into some experience in the distant past you had all but forgotten about. What is the smell? Where and when did you smell it? Who were you with?
Use your description of the smell and place and person to show the reader how it makes you feel to experience this scent again.
Hit Record is also celebrating National Poetry Month with Poem Every Day prompts. If we do them in order from the top of the list, today’s prompt is “date.”
KaleidoSaturday
And don’t forget it’s KaleidoSaturday too. I put my collage into pho.to kaleidoscope maker
and then I found LunaPic where you can alter the kaleidoscope image by changing the number of sides.
Then I found 3Dthis Kaleidoscope and I’m hooked!! This program lets you adjust the facets (sides), reflection, offset, and volume(of the shape) and then you can animate it with control of the reflection, offset, rotation, and speed. This program is so cool!!
Stream of Consciousness
So now for today’s stream of consciousness: Ends with “ound.” Sound, Puget Sound, round, bound, hound, abound, found, pound, surround,
I went on rhymezone and looked up sound: browned, drowned, ground, mound, wound, around, astound, background, confound, compound, expound, foreground, campground, fairground, belowground, playground, underground, profound, rebound, renowned, resound, spellbound, homebound, housebound, inbound, surround, ultrasound, runaround, wraparound, merry-go-round
I’m surprised how many of these are compound words. The words for my NaPoWriMo word bank are supposed to be simple words. Those “ound” words don’t really work for my word bank of sensory words except sound itself, but my word is supposed to be a sound, not the word sound. I can taste a pound cake, I can taste something browned, feel a wound, I can smell the Sound, I can see that something’s round, but I don’t want to force the connection of the prompts if it’s not working. Resound might work for a sound “A resounding joy.”
resound: (of a sound, voice, etc.) fill a place with sound; be loud enough to echo.
“another scream resounded through the school”
Okay, so resound works. It also goes with the solitude prompt because it speaks to echoes.
What is the smell that has the power to plunge me back into an experience in the distant past? Ground can work for this. At first I thought of the smell of the ground, like dirt, and rotting leaves, but then I thought of a ground spice, like ground cinnamon or nutmeg. They might make me think of gingerbread, Or what other ground spice would trigger a memory? I think ground nutmeg is a fun one. What rhymes with nutmeg? bootleg, nest egg, and tent peg, beg, and powder keg. So that’s fun. I guess I’ll go look if I can find some ground nutmeg and see what it makes me think of. Once I do that, it should lead me to my sight, and touch, nutmeg is a smell and taste.
Today’s Poem
When a Memory Finds
In solitude it’s hard to astound.
Attuned to one’s wound, marooned in memory
silence resounds.
We sit on a powder keg
surrounded by the found that at any moment could slip
into the foreground
A whiff of ground nutmeg
and a gingerbread man appears in my mind, but not a memory
of baking or eating cookies,
or Christmas. No. I see the kind
that runs and runs, and says “You can’t catch me.
Maybe that’s why
I keep remembering
sprinkling nutmeg in my coffee at your corner market we walked to when I needed you,
when I walked to work
in those early days full of promise.
I was always that spiced cookie running along the water, searching for a way to cross—
without getting wet,
losing my legs,
surrounded by water, drowned—so I could escape,
never to be found.
Experience Writing 