Setting Off On My Road Trip

After looking at everyone’s Reflections posts, I realized that even though I tried to visit everyone’s A to Z posts as much as I could, I missed out on a lot. Now that the rush to get my posts written every day is over, I can spend some time enjoying all the posts written in April, so I joined the A to Z Road Trip.

graphic by Ronel (Ronel the Mythmaker)

So far along my Road Trip I’ve made some interesting stops. I stopped at Lady in Read Writes and learned some Neologisms, and at Whatever I Think Of I learned about Shani, a Barbie from the early nineties with some interesting videos.

This morning on my Road Trip, I pulled over at Hdhstory.net and read a poem called “Message for Truth.” Truth was one of the first Big 5 contradictory abstract nouns I studied, paired with fiction, then later deceit. So this stop on my road trip had a scenic view of the next pairs of contradictory abstract nouns I’ll be studying.

Contradictory Abstract Nouns: The Next Big 5

Following my idea from my what’s coming in May post, I looked for abstract nouns I would find least connection to and had not found compelling to date. I came up with:

Disturbance or Trouble / Harmony or Tranquility or Order
Disregard / attention
Horror / Delight
Betrayal / Loyalty or Faithfulness
Cowardice / Bravery

Timing / tardiness, untimeliness
Luxury/austerity, poverty
Sophistication / uncouthness
Friendship / animosity
Fact / fiction or lie
Talent / clumsiness
Music / silence or quiet

Relief / Distress or Pain
Favoritism / neutrality or impartiality or indifference
Argument / agreement or accord

The problem is they all interest me, so how do I choose? I continued to look through my list above and remove the ones I was most drawn to until I had only five. Here are my next Big 5 Contradictory Abstract Nouns I’ll be exploring.

Favoritism / Impartiality
Betrayal / Loyalty
Argument / Agreement
Sophistication / Uncouthness
Disturbance / Tranquility

As I continue my study, I’ll be exploring definitions, philosophy, and psychology. I’ll be using what I learn to write poetry and make abstract photographs with the goal of creating a poem and an image that represents each pair.

Then on my Road Trip I stopped at How Would You Know . . . and after reading about the history of rubber, I learned about the Rhyme Royal poetry form that is in iambic pentameter, a line on the map that leads to this week’s Portable MFA review.

The Artist Blank Verse by Maria L. Berg 2024

Poetry MFA Week 5 Review

This was a big week. NaPoWriMo ended on Tuesday. I went to the local poetry reading on Wednesday, and read a poem for the open mic. I started studying Louise Glück. And it was line and meter week for my assignments.

Writing: This week’s assignment for Portable MFA was fun. After reading it aloud many, many times, I took the Louise Glück poem, “Moonless Night” from Meadowlands(assoc. link) and typed it as it is. Then I typed it as a paragraph with no line breaks. Then I proceeded to break the lines in many different ways. Through this exercise, I saw that I would have broken one of the lines differently. The “What’s” in the fourth stanza, sticking out there by itself, could go to the next line, in my opinion. I enjoyed that this exercise helped me see what was bothering me in that fourth stanza.

The assignments for Doug Kearney’s workshop this week were more challenging. I had to study and write blank verse. Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. According to Mary Oliver in A Poetry Handbook(assoc link), iambic pentameter is the most natural for English speech because the stresses of English are iambic and our speaking breath is the length of a pentameter (five feet, or ten beats). I, however, have never found this natural at all.

For the first assignment of writing nonsense over another poet’s Blank Verse to get the feel of the rhythm, I chose “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth. It’s four pages long, so I thought it would provide plenty of practice.

I was listening to my old childhood record of Horton Hatches the Egg and Horton Hears a Who and recognized some anapest feet, so I thought I would listen to the Wordsworth and see if that helped. I found this great video on Youtube:

For the second assignment of writing my own blank verse, I used The Artist(assoc link) magnetic poetry kit. I found the experience interesting. I started grouping the magnets by the words’ syllabic stresses, and actually had some fun with it.

Reading: As I mentioned above, I found that listening was the most helpful this week, and I’ll continue to attempt meter training through listening. I did, however, do some reading as well for my line and meter work. Mary Oliver’s chapter “The Line” in A Poetry Handbook(assoc link) is very clear and insightful, and I also read “The Music of the Line” in The Poet’s Companion(assoc link) by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux.

I’ll talk about the week six MFA instructions and expectations tomorrow.

Time is precious, and I appreciate that you spend some of your time here at Experience Writing reading and learning along with me. I set up a buy me a coffee account, so you can now buy me a beverage. It will help a lot.

See You Tomorrow!

Reflections

Usually for the A to Z Challenge, since I also participate in NaPoWriMo, I choose a type or classification of words. I started with learning new words, then I branched out to musical terms, Janus words, abstract nouns, and contradictory abstract nouns. But this year, I tried something very different. I let my physical collection of Poets & Writers Magazines choose my words.

Here is how I stated my theme back on March 31st: Miscellaneous poetry topics inspired by reading physical Poets & Writers Magazine issues from July 2018 – February 2021. For this year’s challenge I read one magazine cover to cover every two days. I let what stood out to me in the magazine dictate the words I used and what I talked about. I ended up with three magazines left in my collection to read.

I also cut out images and text from each magazine and made a collage for each post. Here’s an image of all twenty-six:

April P&W Collages by Maria L. Berg 2024

Reading through my titles, they read like an abcedarian list poem, so I made some alterations and wrote the poem:

Poetry Is . . .

Poetry is acceptance
Poetry is boxes
Poetry is carrying
Poetry is decisions
Poetry is ephemera
Poetry needs focus
Poetry has gravity
Poetry is hypnagogic
Poetry is an integral ingredient
Poetry is a journey
Poetry is kaleidoscopes
Poetry is listening
Poetry has music
Poetry detects novelty
Poetry is ordinary observations of opposites
Poetry has power of perspective
Poetry ponders a question
Poetry has reach
Poetry is survival
Poetry is time
Poetry is unpinnable
Poetry is violence
Poetry is a wedge
Poetry is collected in Pushcart Prize XLIV
Poetry is you
And Zoom It’s Over

I found my inspiration from every part of the magazines: from Kevin Larimer’s Editor’s Notes; the News and Trends section; The Reactions section of readers letters; The Time is Now writing prompts; The MagNet section that shares the literary magazines that have published one writer on his/her path to their debut collection; The Literary Life section articles; the Special sections of debut writers, and contests; and the main articles and interviews. Every magazine had so much more to offer than just its cover story which was usually a Q&A with a writer.

My Favorites

Posts – Because my main goal for the month was generating poetry drafts, more than the one in my post for NaPoWriMo each day, everything I read and talked about was with writing poetry in mind. My favorite posts were the ones in which my reading inspired a writing exercise or technique. I’m still enjoying the Poetry as Boxes technique that was inspired by a quote from Terrance Hayes. I used the technique for my poem in the post Hypnagogic Poetry. I’m looking forward to trying out my Poetry as Decisions idea, and the You are Poetry idea of fill-in-the-blank questions is something I can use whenever I need a prompt to get started.

Comment – My favorite comment came from Alana from Ramblin with AM. I commented on her Xanthic post and she wrote, “Thank you for commenting on my Blogging from A to Z blog and my use of the word Xanthic. You way out did me, and I liked the photo, too. The letter X is a hard one for many A to Zer and you gave me a couple of more ideas for 2025, if I decide to participate next year. You also taught me about repugnatorial organs and I now have a new vocabulary word.” 

Blogs – Along with Ramblin’ with AM, I enjoyed It’s PH‘s “26 Moments.” I enjoyed Illusions of Chaos (made it to N). And at The Confusing Middle I enjoyed learning from posts about names in Greek mythology.

As it has every year, blogging from A to Z enhanced my National Poetry Month. I learned a lot and I reached my goal of writing more than one poem a day. I have a lot of unpublished poems to revise, edit, and submit to journals. I look forward to coming up with something different and fun for next year.

Thank you to the coordinators at A-to-Z Challenge and to everyone who came by and read my posts. I’m looking forward to joining you on the Road Trip.

I want to continue to submit to journals and contests, however, in this age of Submittable, many journal submissions and almost all contests cost money. On a very limited budget, those costs add up quickly. If you have the means, and would like to help me and my poems along the journey to publication, I set up a buy me a coffee account, so you can now buy me a beverage. It will help a lot.

April Review and What’s Coming in May

I gave the challenges my all. I showed up every day. I began the month promising acceptance for whatever comes, and then instantly regretted it, because the unexpected came again, and again. There was nothing to do but accept it, and yet that didn’t mean I could help but want to get off the roller-coaster at times. In retrospect, the unexpected inconveniences, and tortures, provided plenty of fuel for the month’s challenges. I never ran out of things to write about.

What’s to Come by Maria L. Berg 2024

In my most difficult time this month, I got myself some new magnetic poetry kits(assoc link) to continue writing poetry as a fun game. It helped me out a lot.

Challenging myself to push into the month as a poetry immersive experience made the difference that I wanted. Unlike any other NaPoWriMo, I not only have the poem drafts I published here in response to the prompts, I also have forty unpublished poem drafts typed up in a file.

Visual Art

An entire month away from my mirrorworld. An entire month away from my study of contradictory abstract nouns. I can’t wait to get back to it. But even my favorite passions need a break to be experienced anew. April’s visual arts were collage and kaleidoscopes.

I didn’t glue down any of my collages, only laid the images on a piece of black paper and took a picture. I saved every cut out from each magazine in its own clear plastic envelope. Yesterday, I gathered all the envelopes and dumped their contents on the table with the intent of creating a final, all inclusive collage on the largest canvas I have, but there’s so much, especially text. I may need to make a triptych with the three canvases I have that are the same size. It’s a much larger project than I thought it would be. But it’s fun to have so much pre-chosen and cut out material to play with.

Reviewing Anew by Maria L. Berg 2024

Poetry

I’m really glad I decided to attempt the Portable Poetry MFA (assoc link) along with NaPoWriMo. The readings and assignments contributed to experiencing more connections within the poetic experience. Studying one poem for a whole week while generating draft after draft to different prompts, that poem came into conversation with a combination of prompts and eventually something clicked. When it did, that felt really good. I especially felt it with my poems, “The Cards Dealt Better,” and “Reading the Odyssey for English Lit.”

Tonight is the monthly local poetry reading and open mic at The Postmark Center for the Arts. Thinking of what I would like to read tonight inspired me to read through the poems I posted in April aloud. The seven I chose as possibles for tonight were not ones I had expected. Searching last months efforts for something to read aloud tonight was a fun way to review my poems. I believe I’ll be reading “Proof of the Paranormal,” though there are still hours between now and the reading.

What You May See in May

This morning I looked over what I was doing the last few years in May. Last year I didn’t post much. Guess I needed a break. The year before, I continued daily posts exploring abstract nouns. The year before that I did an extensive study of poetry revision, and took the first poem I wrote for that year’s NaPoWriMo through many different iterations in an eight part series I called Revising Poetry-a Demonstration. I think I’ll take those posts, and rewrite them as a guide for myself, and take some of my poem drafts through the different steps. If I enjoy the results, I may do another series of posts as another demonstration, or I may turn it into a guide book.

I’m in week five of Doug Kearney’s Sharpened Visions Workshop and there’s one more week to go, and after this week, I still have three weeks of my Portable MFA, so I’ll need you to keep me accountable to finish. I’ll continue to post the week in review on Sundays, and what’s to come for the week on Mondays.

Revisiting how excited I was in the May of 2022 after I had chosen abstract nouns for my A to Z Challenge, reminded me how much I enjoy exploring contradictory abstract nouns. I was recently thinking it’s time for me to think about my next Big 5 contradictory abstract nouns for study. The first Big 5 , which I imagined were The Big 5, were: love and apathy; beauty and ugliness; happiness and grief; wisdom and naivete; and truth and fiction. When I was ready to move on, I contemplated five more that would more closely define me, be My Big 5 and these were: Doubt / Certainty; Determination / Reluctance; Creativity / Actuality; Value / Worthlessness; Patience / Impatience. I think this next Big 5 will be abstractions that I feel are the least close to me, give me the knee-jerk reaction that they aren’t part of what defines me, seem distant from me, or are of others. I look forward to seeing what that idea brings for both my writing and art.

Building Momentum by Maria L. Berg 2024

I picked up a few books that look fun and exciting to preview and review from NetGalley. (Links are my Amazon associate links):
The Complete Color Harmony by Tina Sutton
The Universe in 100 Colors by Tyler Thrasher & Terry Mudge
The Mushroom Color Atlas by Julie Beeler
Start Here: Draw by Moira Clinch

So you’ll be hearing about what I learn from them and you can look forward to my book reviews along with everything else I’m learning and experiencing as it comes my way.

During all this activity in April, something had to give, and that turned out to be submissions. I had been doing a great job of keeping up a steady stream of submissions this year, but that stopped in April. I plan to get back to it in a big way this May. I want to continue to submit to journals and contests, however, in this age of Submittable, many journal submissions and almost all contests cost money. On a very limited budget, those costs add up quickly. If you have the means, and would like to help me and my poems along the journey to publication, I set up a buy me a coffee account, so you can now buy me a beverage. It will help a lot.

Blogging A to Z Reflections start tomorrow, so come back for a more specific review of all the exciting things I learned from reading Poets & Writers Magazines cover to cover.

Happy May Day
See You Tomorrow!

Time to Take it All In

Today’s Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub is to “write a poem about self; self-love, self-doubt, self-scrutiny, self-healing…whatever you feel comfortable about sharing. For a whole month you have written for others, today write for yourself. The length and the form are of your choice.”

This prompt inspired me to start my review of some of the work I did in April. This whole month I’ve been keeping daily lists in my journal with perception cues that I altered a bit each week. For this poem I reviewed all these daily journal entries and chose some to create a poem about self.

Magnificent Frigatebird photo by Maria L. Berg 2024

The Poem

Time to Take it All In

I see an organized chaos.
I see an end in sight.

I hear crows caw to my left, and little birds twitter to my right.
The call of the crows overpowers the twitter of the sparrow.

I’m thinking, Sing away little bird!

The call of the Magnificent Frigatebird pulls me back to the sun and ocean
I touch my warm cheek with my cold hand.

I touch all the cupboards trying to solve the mystery of the toaster.
I touch every surface expecting it to be sticky.
I touch everything eventually.

I’m thinking about tomorrow already.
I’m thinking this stillness is pretty wonderful.
I’m thinking of words that start with “ch”
like chopped, chocolate, chirp, and change.

The lap of the waves sound like gentle slaps.
The slap of the door was a release.
The slap of the door meant home.
The slap of the door keeps the people out.
The slap of the door was halted. It never closed.

And Zoom It’s Over

The July/Aug 2020 Poets&Writers Magazine was the first of the magazines I studied this month where the effects of COVID-19 became apparent, an interesting place to end this intensive jaunt through the recent history of Poets & Writers.

P&W Collage #26 – Zoom

In the Trends section in a piece called “Literary Festivals Go Virtual” I read, “The Jackson Hole Writers Conference, Bay Area Book Festival, and Nantucket Book Festival are also offering virtual programming through various online platforms such as Zoom, YouTube, and social media.”

In the Literary Life section in an article called “What We Found in Writing,” poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi said, “like so many people, my classes have been moved to Zoom, and that has been surprisingly fun and also brutal on the eyes. And it turns out there’s even more administrative work during a pandemic. The five-day workweek seems to mean nothing to Zoom.”

And in The Practical Writer section in an article called “Publishing During a Pandemic,” memoirist Paul Lisicky had to call off his book tour in March, but by the end of April he had done seventeen digital events. “the meetings were on Zoom, but he soon transitioned to the platform Crowdcast, which can be programmed to feature a button on viewers’ screens that allows them to buy a book.”

Many of you may remember how quickly Zoom took over our lives. Those screens with all those faces in boxes becoming the norm in both entertainment and personal interactions.

Though I’m glad it’s no longer such a prevalent part of daily life, I have recently found some generative poetry and poetry critique groups that use it: one in California, one in New York, and one in Vermont. I’m really enjoying participating in them, so I’m thankful that Zoom became a convenient tool for gatherings.

The Prompts

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

PAD Challenge : For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:

  1. Write a The End poem, and/or…
  2. Write a Beginning poem.

In Louise Glück’s Meadowlands she has several poems about Telemachus, “Telemachus’ Detachment,” “Telemachus’ Guilt,” “Telemachus’ Kindness,” “Telemachus’ Dilemma,” “Telemachus’ Fantasy,” “Telemachus’ Confession,” and “Telemachus’ Burden.”

Telemachus is the son of Odysseus and Penelope and the central character of Homer’s Odyssey. Louise Glück wrote her poems in Telemachus’s voice. In each poem he is talking about his relationship with his parents.

There are many other poems having to do with the Odyssey in the collection, but for today, I thought I would focus on Telemachus.

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt inspired me to get started on my study of Louise Glück for this week’s MFA work. I found an interesting interview from 1982. I recommend watching it if you’re interested in learning about her process.

Today’s Poem

Reading the Odyssey for English Lit

My alarm clock wails like the child of morning,
and sitting up with my feet on the carpet
I wonder what would, what could possibly
make feet comely. I draw the curtains
to no rosy-fingered dawn, only black winter,
but I hear him, my latest “uncle” banging away
in the kitchen. At least this one is still semi-
functioning in the morning, and has a notion
of contribution that includes cooking food.

I linger at the window staring into the dark.
I know he’s trying, but I feel like Telemachus
with the suitors, eating their way through
his inheritance, through him. Dad’s not dead.
He just left. Or, maybe he’s dead. He might
as well be. I pull open all my drawers, but find
nothing that would make me look like an
immortal god. I leave my room anyway.

I shove my hands in my pockets, bracing
for the dreaded, Hey champ! Another great day,
right? What you got cookin’? Heh, Heh.
That overly cheery I’m-your-friend voice.
Bright smile pushed out under those red-
veined cheeks and eyes. He’s not fooling
anyone, but he’s really trying. I like
the eggs and bacon. It can’t last.

I joined the jazz choir so I would have a zero
hour; have to leave home before Mom got up.
I hate the way she toys with each “uncle” as if
her lover were needlework she unraveled
every night. My bright yellow ship awaits.
Though my crew is sleepy and useless, I must
sail these tumultuous seas. I will soon sing
his funeral rites with all due pomp, and build
a barrow to his memory.

Time is precious, and I appreciate that you spend some of your time here at Experience Writing reading and learning along with me. I set up a buy me a coffee account, so you can now buy me a beverage. It will help a lot.

And don’t forget:

Have fun tonight

It’s time to celebrate!

And come back tomorrow for my April review and what to expect in May.

Quadrille Monday

Mish’s prompt for today’s Quadrille (a poem of exactly 44 words) at dVerse Poets Pub is “Blaze.” I had so much fun using magnetic poetry for this last time, I thought I’d try it again. I used the Original Edition(assoc link), but stole the word “zeal” from the Genius kit(assoc link). Here’s what I came up with:

We Blaze Between the Rain Storms

You Are Poetry

While reading through the July/Aug 2020 Poets&Writers Magazine, I didn’t find a lot of Y words to choose from. The one that came up the most was “you” in the form of a question.

P&W Collage #25 – You Are Poetry

Like in the Q&A with Natasha Trethewey, Joshunda Sanders asks, “Are you relieved to have physical distance from Georgia?” “Have you been changed by writing this memoir?” and How do you cope with that?”

In the First Fiction 2020 section each debut author is asked questions by another author who is “introducing” them. The questions are printed in red. They asked questions like, “Can you tell me about when and how you first started writing these stories?” and “How do you feel about the collection coming into the world in this strange, fraught time?”

Then I read this quote from Ashleigh Bryant Phillips who wrote the story collection Sleepovers(assoc link), “You can end up hearing the life stories of a couple different family members over the course of mashing potatoes or silking corn. And the sounds of the words in this storytelling—it’s music.”

Can you? You can.

As I read over these questions, I started hacking off the specifics of the questions and wondering how filling in the blanks might lead to poetry. Here are the questions I came up with:

How long did you contemplate _____?
Was it cathartic to_____?
Are you relieved to have physical distance from_______?
Have you been changed by______?
Do you think _______ captures that feeling, suspends it in amber?
Was helping others a motivation for _____?
How do you cope with _____?
How do you feel about _____ coming into the world?
What do the people you know and love think about this place?
Is there a feeling that you’re a spy in this house?
How do you envision the role of violence in _____?
What sent you down the road that _____?
How did you handle the fear to get to _____?
How did it shift while _____?
What made you want to explore _____?
How do you bring those concepts into _____?
What do you think bout the future of _____?

If you fill in those blanks with the first thing that comes to mind; choose your favorites and arrange them; that could be a poem in itself. And / or, filling in the blanks then answering your questions could lead to some self discovery to put in a poem.

I’m excited about this idea for creating questions for myself from interview questions. I’m going to have to go back through the magazines, and see what else I find.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo : “Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title.”

PAD Challenge : A title prompt, “Until (blank)”

Poetry Non-stop : Write a poem inspired by a singer or artist

Poetry Super Highway : “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.” This poetry writing prompt submitted by Judy England-McCarthy

Today’s Poem

Until Altruism

altruism doesn’t really exist, because we are selfish,
self-serving beings. Until altruism we feel pleasure
when we are praised for helping others, and thus
are helping for the dopamine. Until altruism it turns out
giving of ourselves isn’t cathartic, it’s frustrating.
Until altruism we are relieved to have
physical distance from lack of resources,
insane expectations, and having to face
really hard questions of what help is. Until altruism,
trying to help, the idea of betterment, assumes change
which is invasive violence itself. Until altruism,
the giver is a masochist, receiving pleasure from getting
nothing but pain in return. Stepped on, stepped over,
forgotten, expected, never truly appreciated.
Deep down, no matter how much we try,
there’s no getting around it. We are self-serving.
We want attention for our good deeds. We want to
be showered in gratitude and love. Until altruism is
finally programmed into an emotion-understanding
robot, altruism will never exist, and even then, if
the robot understands emotions to be able to tend
to others’, will it not feel some need for reciprocation
of its own?

Portable MFA Week Five: Shape

This week’s focus is free verse line breaks.

Writing: This week’s instructions are to choose a favorite free-verse poem and re-write it twice. “Each time, make different choices in terms of line length and line breaks than the poet did, and study the results you get; feel your way through them.”

Reading: This week we can choose another poet to study. Since I’ve been learning so much from my Ada Limón study, I thought I would try studying a poet that I have found challenging, Louise Glück. I picked up a copy of Meadowlands (1996)(assoc link) last time I was at the library. For this week’s poem, I’ll be looking at “Moonless Night.” As part of my study, I’ll use it for my writing exercises as well.

Time is precious, and I appreciate that you spend some of your time here at Experience Writing reading and learning along with me. I set up a buy me a coffee account, so you can now buy me a beverage. It will help a lot.

And don’t forget to get your free tickets to:

See you tomorrow!

Wild and Mysterious Poetry

This week I talked about being unpinnable, the violence of language, and survival, so I was drawn to my Sasquatch poetry kit (assoc link).

Sasquatch Sijo by Maria L. Berg 2024

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo: Write 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.”

PAD Challenge: Write a dead poem

Poetry Non-stop: Write a supermarket poem

Today’s Poem

Convenience

I need to grocery shop at the store down the hill with the
fresh produce, nuts and seeds bins, and vastly better choices,
but closer to the library, the Grocery Outlet awaits.

Poetry MFA Week 4 Review

Writing: This week was both challenging and fun. I combined the assignments from Doug Kearney’s workshop with the forms I needed to write for the Portable MFA, and wrote a Lipogram Villanelle, and let Shakespeare write the end rhymes for my Sonnet.

I thought this week would be a good time to re-visit Terrance Hayes’s DIY Sestina machine from So To Speak (2023)(assoc link). And though I love the diagram and can imagine those gears moving the columns of words up and down, I still can’t say that it helps me write a sestina at all.

For my sestina I returned to Ada Limón’s “Sharks in the Rivers II” from her collection Sharks in the Rivers (2010) (assoc link) and chose sets of six words that stood out to me from the poem. I found it to be a really interesting way to study the poem. I read it differently and the words stood out individually. If you haven’t tried word grouping while studying a poem, I recommend it.

Thanks to this week’s prompts I also wrote a Triolet, and an American Sonnet. And last week I wrote a Pantoum.

Reading: This week’s reading really came together yesterday. While looking at the American Sonnet, I could see how a poem doesn’t only bring words together, but other poems and poets as well, and that gave me a new perspective against my own argument. I really enjoyed seeing so many of the things I’ve been reading connecting in a meaningful way.

I’ll talk about the week five MFA instructions and expectations tomorrow.

Time is precious, and I appreciate that you spend some of your time here at Experience Writing reading and learning along with me. I set up a buy me a coffee account, so you can now buy me a beverage. It will help a lot.

Happy Poetry Month!
Only Two More Days!
See you tomorrow

XLIV Pushcart Prize Collection

On the page across from the editor’s note in the May/June 2020 Poets&Writers Magazine, there’s a full page ad for the 2020 Pushcart Prize XLIV Best of the Small Presses edited by Bill Henderson. The X in this number is ten subtracted from the L after it, as the I is one subtracted from the V after it, so we end up with forty-four.

P&W Collage #23 – Wedge

There’s a quote from Jane Hirshfield on the bottom of the book cover that says, “A book made by the entire community of writers, for the entire community of writers.” Yet it only contains 72 poems, stories, essays and memoirs from 47 presses. And there are so many other types of writing and writers.

I enjoy reading the collection and I’m glad they had an ad in the magazine so I had an entry for “X” but that word “entire” is gnawing at me. The purpose of the collection is to choose what they consider the best work in all the journals over a year, and that’s from what was published, when 97% to 98% of submissions are rejected, and that’s only including the people who submit their writing to journals. What could be less of an entirety?

However, this morning’s NaPoWriMo prompt, to write an American Sonnet, has an example from Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnets to my Past and Future Assassin which I was reading recently. His book was inspired by the work of Wanda Coleman who developed the American Sonnet, and while reading her American Sonnets published in 1994, I read Sonnet 17, “i am seized with the desire to end” which sounded uncannily similar to the title of the novel I finished this week “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” (which I see was made into a movie in 2020 on Netflix), and the next sonnet, 18, is “after June Jordan” who came up in the Portable MFA this week, which said, “You might also want to look at poet June Jordan‘s work to see how deftly she uses rap to give structure to some of her best poems.” (links in this paragraph are my amazon associate links)

Looking at all these connections in just one morning’s reading, I can see how one poem, or collection of poems, of poetry form can include perhaps not the “entire” community of writers, but a lot of us.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo : Write an American Sonnet

PAD Challenge : Write a remix poem

Today’s prompts inspired me to return to my post Poetry as Boxes from Day 2 (Oh so long ago. Who was that person writing those things?), and remix my poem, “The Light on the Top of the Box is Blinking Yellow” using the paper cube idea to find different points of entry for my American Sonnet.

Today’s Poem

1.

Only yesterday I swore acceptance

of all that was to come. Only yesterday
I would have open mind and arms
to every barrier in my way, thinking
of last year’s fall, last month’s illness, knowing
something always goes wrong, I would greet it
with acceptance. And here it is, the unexpected.
I awoke without a tether to the world.
And worrying that you’re gone for good
that I couldn’t bring you back
plans shredded and flapped in the wind
all communications lost.

I’m not sure when our relationship changed
from casual to this unhealthy dependence.

See you tomorrow!

Poetry as a Wedge

In the Q&A with Cathy Park Hong called “Double Doors Open” by Dana Isokawa in the May/June 2020 Poets&Writers Magazine, the word “wedge” is used three times in three different ways.

P&W Collage #23 – Wedge

Dana Isokawa writes, “I spot Hong’s three poetry titles on a top shelf, wedged between Homer’s Odyssey and Garrett Hongo’s Coral Road.” In answer to a question, Cathy Park Hong says, “I had to wedge writing time in when she” (her five year old daughter) “went to swim class or early in the morning before she woke up.” Then when speaking about her essays about her experiences as an Asian-American she says, “sometimes I feel like a traitor, because of how we’re always used as this wedge. We’re not entirely victims nor are we entirely aggressors; we’re somewhere in between.”

That first use of wedge, makes me picture shoving something in, the second makes me think of prying something out, and the third? Being used to create a separation, forcing things/people apart. A poem can work in all of these ways, through juxtaposition, through condensation, and through observation.

A wedge is a simple machine. You have to apply force to make it work.

The Prompts

NaPoWriMo : use alliteration, consonance, and assonance

PAD Challenge : Write a persona poem

Poetry Non-stop : write a poem inspired by fire. This could be a literal fire (like a bonfire, campfire, home fire, wild fire, etc) or a metaphorical fire (like the fuel for passion, love, determination, etc). Whatever sparks your interest!

Today’s Poem

A Fire Friday Morning

I am but fire, fighting
the elements to flicker and flame
fiercely fed fuel for hour after hour

Aflight in the night as he cried
to my pyre about the liars
I flashed and danced

to the boom, boom, boom
of his tunes, but now I see
her light across the lake

and feel faulty, even feeble
on a Friday at five am in the rain
my feisty light must be an odd sight

Does she think me insane
a fire in the rain, or does she
only hear the bass beat boom?

Does she fear for the friendless
or try to forfend a foreign
feeling of foreboding?

She will forget me as light
creeps over the horizon.
A freakish fire that died in the rain.

See you tomorrow!