The Dverse Poets Pub’s challenge today is to try the Mirrored Refrain form created by Stephanie Repnyek. It looks like a fun challenge of rhyme and repetition. Here goes:
A Needed Rest
Fireflies’ sparks among the murmur, relief within the monotonous slop, illuminate the eighth-note rest, thrust of syncopation, surprise stop.
A small puncture to the drone, the point of the carving knife presses, thrust of syncopation, surprise stop. Illuminate the eighth-note rest.
Spaces of magnetic balance where attraction and repulsion lock illuminate the eighth-note rest, thrust of syncopation, surprise stop.
A skip that jolts the battered heart with the sharp, invigorating sting of zest, Thrust of syncopation, surprise stop, illuminate the eighth-note rest.
The poetry form inspired me to go out and take some fun mirror pictures. I almost melted, but got some nice pictures. Thank you for the inspiration.
I thought I would combine the prompts and was mid-freewrite with the ideas, but then something happened. 🙂
Pegacorn leashed by Maria L. Berg 2021
Flying Free on the Slightest Breeze
I ran to save a pegacorn. It happens. I jumped up and ran to my dock expecting to intercept but it surprised me
It didn’t stop. It flipped in a flash, floating on a slight breeze, landing halfway
to the neighbor’s dock It eyed me and its escape one more flip then gone
I sprinted through the weeds ignoring the bushes grown together I found footing over the sharp wet rocks and leaped
over the watery gap to the wobbly planks in time, just in time to grab
that mythical horse’s horn and deliver it to a thankful mermaid ready for a flying adventure
Great Balls of Fire by Maria L. Berg 2021
Here’s the original poem of somewhat combined prompts:
Fireballs Happen
The great ball of fire commands the day burns up the clouds for full display brightens the blues, the greens, yellows, and pinks and heats up the ant invasion
The great ball of firing neurons attenuate to every black speck, ready to hate the second it moves, obsessively out for the kill if only this year it could end
The great ball of fire from ant-filled wood each crackle a hope lifting my mood they burned, they burned the entire glorious day diminished, but never gone
As I admire the great balls of fiery rhododendrons each tattooed blossom aflame in summer, my neurons burn with hope that the bomb of toxins I desperately set in the bathroom will push back
No! Destroy the enemy, so I may some day bake and bathe undisturbed under the great ball of fire in the sky
The dVerse Poets Pub prompt for Poetics is Blue Tuesday. Sarah challenges us to write Blue poems which gave me an idea for another redraft, “Put a color on it.” This a great way to think about revising to emotion as well. When you’ve identified the mood and emotion you want your poem to convey, ask yourself what color that is and use that color as a filter for redrafting your poem. The Sherwin-Williams paint colors site is a great tool for exploring color families and color names.
Put a color on it
For this poem, I imagined using a blue lens on my camera and using it to tint my poem. I used some of the draft from the thesaurus game below and made it blue.
Seeing in Blue
An atmospheric perception after the rain in the steam of warm rain captures contrary smoky-azurite wings those wings just can’t agree pulsating rhythmic reflections in a poll the rhythm’s inverted beats in a pool’s still, faded-flaxflower waters
Rapture jammed with glacial conceits fancy whims chilling beneath mid-cloudburst like ebbtide in advance it will advance the tide of the swimming, sense of falling falling, falling into this dive maneuvering eviction from a wondrous whirlpool
The outlook grows lake-water crisp Ow! It bites, clarity after a meditative rainstorm’s punctuation all those taps, droppy drips untimately leads to discovering the fountain, finally find, what’s to find transmitting blissful moonmist
Seeing Blue by Maria L. Berg 2021
I thought of a couple more quick and easy redrafting techniques over the weekend. I am a huge fan of my thesaurus and thought what fun it would be to use my thesaurus to come up with replacements for all of the main nouns and verbs. I’ll call this exercise Thesaurus Game.
Thesaurus Game
Here’s what I came up with using the first stanza of the original short-centered line poem “Indelible Marks” for demonstration:
Permanent Symbols
a perception captures contrary wings flittering in range of a basin’s elbowroom
jammed with glacial conceits mid-provocation like ear-ringing in advance of the swimming, sense of falling, maneuvering eviction from a coil
the outlook grows crisp as if ultimately discovering the fountain transporting pervading corruption saturation
While reading the Back Draft:John Murillo interview, the two versions of “Mercy, Mercy Me” made me think of another, somewhat simple redraft I can do. I can turn it upside down. I think I will add that to my process at the beginning of redrafting.
Turn It Upside-Down
When I took the full, long lines of the current draft and turned them upside down, I didn’t find a lot of inspiration, but when I took the short, centered lines and turned them upside down, I found some interesting lines. That inspired me to completely reverse the words which also revealed some interesting lines.
Drag center line to the right or left to reveal each poem
This comparison block makes me happy! I liked how Back Draft on Guernica was comparing their first draft and final draft poems using JuxtaposeJS, so I created a Juxtapose on the knightlab site, but the HTML wasn’t working with WordPress. I found a work-around which included downloading a plug-in and writing more HTML, and I was planning on trying it for the final poem reveal, but now I don’t have to. Yay for comparison block. Thank you WordPress.
Flower Basket (2020) multi-media collage by Maria L. Berg
I did it! I made it through April with over thirty new poems posted, inspired by NaPoWriMo and the Poem-a-Day Challenge. Congratulations to everyone who met these challenges. It was very fun to see the winners posted for last November’s Poem-a-Day Chapbook challenge. Congratulations De Jackson!
At the A to Z Challenge there’s an after-challenge survey. I enjoyed using the challenge to explore Janus words and phrases in my poetry.
I also enjoyed discovering art, craft and design sites I hadn’t visited before along with other writing sites.
This challenge isn’t quite finished. There will be a reflections post sign-up on May 3 and a blog road trip starting May 10th.
It’s time to get back to revision. This week I’ll be posting about my poetry revision process. I hope you’ll join me and share your tips and tricks for poetry revision.
Over at the A to Z Challenge they have a word scramble. The Janus word for today is zip which can mean energy, vim, or nothing, nada, zero
Time To Go
Goodbye. It’s time for me to be on my way
If only I knew where I wanted to be
I would zip up the stairs and burst out the door climb into the car and back down the drive
I could turn right or left and loop directly back here somehow climbing uphill both ways
with water always at my right hand an eagle soaring overhead
and if I venture further past the pentacostals and jehova’s witnesses the elementary school or the gas station speed down the hill or up the road will bring me here again
larger loops radiating as if a stone dropped in the lake on a still day I might as well stay
Over at the A to Z Challenge they’re playing the Yes Game. My Janus word is yield which can mean; to give up, surrender, or relinquish, but also; to produce by natural process.
Today is Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub where you can share your best recent poem and read and comment on all the great poetry being shared.
This is the window
with the slightly broken sill covered in flakes of pop-corn ceiling with semi-sheer blinds that when open tuck up all wrinkled on one side through this dusty, cobwebbed window revealed by off-white sheers belted to hooks where a speck of a beige-dotted bug climbs there’s a once thought impossible view
because for my whole life it was blocked by next door’s tall firs providing cool shade lakeside my great aunt told me she did it on purpose to hurt her brother next door a family feud of unnatural proportion wielding God’s power one sibling on another imagine each day’s hurt never recovered
But they’re all gone now and I can finally see past the iron railing, the rhodie, and the hedge to the rippling water, a dock, and a buoy to the houses and the park, but above that what this table was so long deprived is the sky filled with mountain– ignore the threatening volcano inside– massive contrasts of blue and white glacier and rock, snow blanketed slopes it’s never not amazing, not one single time I look, even hiding behind complete cloud cover when a stranger wouldn’t know it’s there
I tried to think of any other window where I would rather look and suddenly, I am in the international space station, looking down on Earth my body is confined, but my view through this small portal is as if the eye of God. To see the sphere its atmosphere floating in the void to know the glorious insignificance of momentary stresses, bringing overwhelming strife, but seeing all connection of a day in life
But there’s no coming back from that I’ve already known what new seeing can do, would I want to add that fractured knowing too?
I only have this window for a ticking-clock of time, I want to be aware, to take in each tick of this view while it’s sublime, the years of firs blocking the way flew so quickly by knowing there are limits, a coming end erases the flaws in the pane, even the baked-on bird gifts that won’t scrape with a blade, all I see gleams this view holds a vivid shine
At the A to Z Challenge they are turning their thoughts to what’s next. At the end of the challenge in May, I’ll be back to my revision focus. What is your revision plan? What is your revision process?
The Janus phrase for today is wind up meaning (1) To start; (2) to finish.
The poetics prompt at the dVerse Poets Pub today is about poetry as a bridge and includes the puente form. Here’s hoping it will help me bridge all my ideas.
To Know Every Heather Flower – by Maria L. Berg 2021
Overwhelming Possibilities
Each time I try to imagine the life of every human I wind up faced with the limitations of my perception I thought I might start with those in the houses I see, try to have empathy for their children and spouses a plot at a time, from the blue rambler to the three-story brown but that’s already too much, overwhelmed I shut down
~because I don’t believe it’s possible~
to know every tiny blue flower along the drive or each of the purple heather visited by bees it would take all my time to give each a name recognize each quality that is not the same and that’s but the surface, as precious and delicate as we are we may as well be numerous as the heavenly stars
The occasion prompt inspired me to head over to National Day Calendar and see what kind of National events and “days” are happening. I was surprised by what I found.
A few of those got me thinking. National Work Zone Awareness might be difficult if you are observing Sky Awareness. And Every Kid Healthy may conflict with National Princess Week. However, Sky Awareness could combine with Princess Awareness if you see castles in the sky, and Medical Laboratory Professionals can be appreciated for keeping Kids Healthy and Infant Immunization. Lots to think about, but I’m kind of stuck on Sky Awareness Week. The idea that people might only be aware of the sky for one week in April is interesting and surprising. 🙂
An Offered Palm – by Maria L. Berg 2021
Nephelococcygia and the art of sky awareness
It’s finally here the nationally recognized week I’ve waited for all year
Those seven days to lay down outside and shift my gaze
up to the sky and become aware of things that fly
like jets and seaplanes eagles and ducks pleasantly observed until it rains
and clouds in layers creating shapes for nephelococcygian players
shifting and forming fantastical beasts and faces and castles before the storming
when I’ll run inside but still be aware the sky will abide
above and at week’s end when awareness shifts back to the earth to tend
sky unobserved like a falling tree in the forest, eyes closed no clouds to see
NaPoWriMo has a fun prompt where I’m to find an article about an animal and replace the animal name with an abstract or other specific concrete noun. The Poem-a-Day challenge is to write a question poem and my Janus word for the A to Z Challenge is unbending; meaning both rigid, inflexible, refusing to yield or compromise, as in “his stance against reform was unbending”; or becoming less tense, relaxing, as in “unbending a little, she confided…”
Capturing Rainbow Butterflies (2020) bokeh photograph by Maria L. Berg
Flying Dream Felons?
Though flying dreams are not endangered, they are vulnerable because their habitats are vanishing
a concerned citizen called authorities after noticing boxes– flying dream traps– on trees in Florida
Americans aren’t the only ones who find dreams adorable they’re small, furry exotic notions valued and thought of as pocket pets
while it is legal to breed flying dreams, in most cases, it’s illegal to take them from the wild and sell them to wildlife exporters
and flying dreams make awful pets unbending in their nocturnal enterprises, they make a lot of noise at night and they have sharp teeth
imagine how the dreams must feel taken from their homes and sent to foreign lands
Inspired by “Flying squirrel felons” by John Kelly, published in the Washington Post April 13, 2021.
My Janus word for the A to Z Challenge is terrible which can mean formidable, or lousy.
Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt inspired me to head over to ModPo on coursera to listen to and read some of the poems discussed there. In the resources section, I took a look at ModPo Plus (part 1) and found “Popcorn-can cover” by Lorine Niedecker.
I really love how Niedecker created this connection for me: an image of the cold, scritching and scratching a hole in the wall to squeeze its whiskered nose and furry body through. So for my response, I want to try a few of these to see if I can create some great imagery by turning a noun into a verb. Plus it will have to be a terrible verb that has an appointment. 😉
Inflatable sea-turtle raft launched from the terrible, slippery ramp so she can merganser all day
Glittered Seahawks flip-flops slipped under my soles to cover my delicate skin so those sneaky shards of glass from last winter’s storm can’t tiger-muskie in
This shock gasp squished into a swimsuit has an appointment with the chilly water so the dread can’t eagle down
Experience Writing 