NaPoWriMo Day 30: Three Haiku

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "I’d like you to try your hand at a minimalist poem. What’s that? Well, a poem that is quite short, and that doesn’t really try to tell a story, but to quickly and simply capture an image or emotion. Haiku are probably the most familiar and traditional form of minimalist poetry, but there are plenty of very short poems out there that do not use the haiku form."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "It’s time for our fifth (and final) Two for Tuesday prompt of the month! Pick one prompt or use both…your choice! [A] Write a stop poem. [B] Write a don’t stop poem."

Well, ending on a minimalist note feels like going out with a whimper rather than a bang, but I'm still swamped today so I'm kind of grateful. But I did write three haiku (in my head first, in the pre-dawn hours) that encompass not-stopping and stopping. Two of these are drawn from memories of my teen years -- I'm not sure if memory-based haiku are considered legit or not but, for now, whatever.


Three Haiku

Dirt-blackened stop sign
Shadowed by an overpass:
“A” student fails test.

(Yes, this was what happened on my first driving test, in lower Manhattan -- I didn’t see the sign and got an automatic failure for not stopping. Such intense teenage shame; I cried and cried to have failed something for the first time. I wish I could figure out how to get that shame into the poem more directly.)


Quiet empty streets;
Red jewel glows in your headlights:
Pause, bow to the night.


And one more, another very specific memory from my teen years about a different kind of not stopping; I’ve cheated and added a title because the specific, disgusting kind of soda is part of the image for me:

Mello Yello

Throat clogged with horse-dust,
Cold can of scraping bubbles--
Gulping to the end.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite, or quote without permission.

NaPoWriMo Day 29: "Again and Again"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today, I’d like to challenge you to [produce] a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully. You might try including a dramatic, declarative statement, like Hass’s 'All the new thinking is about loss,' or O’Hara’s 'It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.' Or, like Baudelaire, you might try addressing your feeling directly, as if it were a person you could talk to. There are as many approaches to this as there are poets, and poems."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "For today’s prompt, take the phrase '(blank) Again,' replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then write your poem. Possible titles include: 'Here We Go Again,' 'On the Road Again,' 'Stumped on What to Write Again,' and 'Doing the Wrong Thing Again.'"

I was afraid I wasn't going to make it today as I'm swamped with urgent grading and distracted by worry about a friend, but I found a few minutes in the late afternoon, and I'm determined not to slip up so close to the end. My poem turned out to be more about meditation practice, something very important to me over the past year, than to be a meditation in itself. And while I don't always feel tranquil about longing as an emotion, at the moment it's not the thing I'm feeling, so I did consider it  calmly and from a distance here. I used the Emily Dickinson lines as my declarative statement; I have often spoken in classes about her use of such statements to lead off poems.

Again and Again

Longing is like the seed

That wrestles in the ground

wrote Emily Dickinson.

And because I have always

known its sharp twist and pull

flipping and pinning me,

how it digs the raw tunnels

of its roots, long and tangled

as unplowed prairie,

so I return again and again

to sit and follow breath in

and out of the bright air above,

to feel the dank earth of me

shudder and heave with it

again and again as well.

To go down there in the dark

of it, where its cells divide,

where it moves the way it does,

pushing upward through clods

towards the faintest glow.

To lay myself gently next to it,

telling it of the rain that seeps

invisibly downwards, murmuring

yes, there, there you are.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not quote, cite, or copy without permission.

NaPoWriMo Day 28: "The Walkway"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today I’d like to challenge you to try your hand at a meta-poem of your own" -- a poem about poetry.

So, I decided not to do the PAD Challenge prompt today, which involved remixing a previous poem for the month in some way -- a fun idea, but I felt I just wanted to do the first prompt seriously and not compromise my desire to articulate something meaningful, since none of my previous poems jumped out as great candidates for metapoetic transformation.

I like what I wrote -- though I'm not sure if anyone would easily get that it's about poetry without being clued in. Maybe that's a good thing? It's clearly metaphoric. Weirdly, like yesterday's poem, it came out as a sonnet without my having even planned that, although this one lacks a turn, or the turn comes after nine lines rather than eight.

The Walkway

When you walk through one of those underground

passages, and it’s dark suddenly, damp, and you’re all

alone with yourself, and a little spooked by it,

with the sound of your footsteps suddenly loud;

like a child, though, you’re compelled to make noise--

“Hooo hoooo!” -- so that you hear your own voice

all echoey, full of tone, portentous as the universe

speaking right to you. That sound fills your chest

throbbing from within and without all at once.

The world seems far away, behind you and ahead,

remembered only, not seen, lost for a minute,

until you come to the end, the archway framing it,

bright image of what is, there, all in color again,

then you are in it, back into life, but changed.

What I'm picturing is the arched underground walkway near UNI's Wellness and Recreation Center, but I can't find a picture of it!

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite, or quote without permission.

NaPoWriMo Day 27: "Back East"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "I’d like to challenge you to 'remix' a Shakespearean sonnet. Here’s all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You can pick a line you like and use it as the genesis for a new poem. Or make a 'word bank' out of a sonnet, and try to build a new poem using the same words (or mostly the same words) as are in the poem. Or you could try to write a new poem that expresses the same idea as one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, like 'hey baby, this poem will make you immortal' (Sonnet XVIII) or 'I’m really bad at saying I love you but maybe if I look at you adoringly, you’ll understand what I mean' (Sonnet XXIII). If you’re feeling both silly and ambitious, you might try writing an anagram-sonnet, like K. Silem Mohammad has done[.]"

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "For today’s prompt, pick a direction, make that the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. There are so many directions: north, south, up, down, left, right, over, under, etc. But there are also more specific directions like 'Across the Way,' 'Through the Woods,' and 'Beyond the Clearing.' Or give directions like 'Clean Your Room,' 'Tie Your Shoes,' or 'Get Over Here.'"

I decided I would try the "word bank" approach, and I searched the online collection of sonnets for direction words, hoping to find "east" as I felt inclined to write some thoughts about going back east soon for my 35th college reunion. Lo and behold, Sonnet 132, "Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me" had both "east" and "west" in it, and wasn't oppressively familiar. It also had the word "grey," which very much evoked the gothic stone buildings of Bryn Mawr College. So I wrote out a list of all the key words from the original and then began my poem.

Though it wasn't my original intention, I found I was writing about the recent controversy over the name of what has always been called Thomas Great Hall, as current students have protested the unsavory views of one of the college's founding (and lesbian) eminences, M. Carey Thomas, which has led to the official removal of "Thomas" as part of the name. I'm aware that even though I'm one of the women Thomas wouldn't have wanted at the college, I feel a lot of resistance to the renaming and the erasing of the positive aspects of her legacy. Anyway, name aside, I have powerful memories of being in that building, especially certain spiritual transports listening to classical music while gazing out the enormous windows at the sky beyond.

I wasn't setting out to write another sonnet, but as I neared the end I realized it was becoming one -- the turn had already happened naturally just in the right spot. And I noticed that it was tending towards a couplet slant-rhyme scheme in places, so I worked on it then to get the rest to fit. I got most of the sonnet keywords into my poem, maybe not every single one, and with some grammatical shifts.

Back East

A gothic Great Hall, now freshly unnamed
for a woman who loved women but felt disdain
towards Jews and Blacks. What well beseemed us then
has turned to torment and the vocal pain
of the young and righteous, who hold pity
for past blindness unsuited. Ruth feels my necessity;
it is, yes, foul, but truly more a lack I mourn for.
Yet with hot cheeks and words new worlds are ushered.
This part persists: the beauty of grey stones,
our sober Quaker castle with its vaulted heaven,
where I raised my eyes to the glory of window arches
rippling the morning sun or evening full of stars.
There in my own young torment I would look above
to find that grace I’d swear by, love without love.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite, or quote without permission.

NaPoWriMo Day 26: "An Evening Song"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that uses repetition. You can repeat a word, or phrase. You can even repeat an image, perhaps slightly changing or enlarging it from stanza to stanza, to alter its meaning."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt:  "For today’s prompt, write an evening poem. A poem about or during the night. Or take evening a completely different direction and think of evening the score or making things more even (or fair or whatever)."

I determined I wanted to do the repetition by writing a pantoum, and thought about what tends to repeat itself in the evening for me. Well. I assume a lot of people out there will relate to this. Not a deep poem, but it was fun and the pantoum wrote itself really quickly and easily.

An Evening Song

Tonight I really want to go to bed early

and read for a while before I sleep.

But first I need to finish my poem

and I have to check some facts online.

I need to read for class before I sleep,

or else I’ll have to get up at 5:00

to prep and check some things online.

But first I should wash that sink of dishes;

I hate to see them when I get up at 5:00!

Which reminds me, I need to scoop the litter--

right after I wash that sink of dishes

since my dog will wake up and want to go out.

As soon as I’m done scooping the litter

it seems I deserve to just sit for a minute,

at least after I’m back from taking the dog out,

and check Twitter to confirm the world’s not ending.

It seems I deserve to lie down just a minute,

and look at Facebook to relieve the tension

since it seems the world might or might not be ending.

Can it really be that late already?

Just a little more Facebook to relieve the tension--

wait, damn, I still need to finish that poem!

How did it get this late already?

Tomorrow night I’ll plan to go to bed early.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite, or quote without permission.

NaPoWriMo Day 25: "Mistress Dyer in Springtime"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt:  "I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that: 1) Is specific to a season; 2) Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell); 3) Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”).

Today's PAD Challenge prompt:  "For today’s prompt, write an exile poem. Exile is a noun, a verb, and an American rock band from Richmond, Kentucky. A person, animal, or object can be exiled. But people and animals also exile others–or even exile themselves."

The idea of exile immediately made me know I would write one of my Mary Dyer poems, which I haven't done in a while -- technically she experienced banishment, but that's pretty much the same thing. And choosing the 17th century led me to the Psalm 137 with its reference to the Babylonian exile and its famous rhetorical question that it seemed very fitting Mary should ponder.

The verses are quoted from the 1599 Geneva Bible, not the King James Version. Anne Hutchinson (the "she" here) preferred the Geneva Bible, so I am having Mary Dyer use it here as well, though that may not be historically accurate. But I like how it very slightly estranges the wording from what we are familiar with (or hear as a Bob Marley song, though it was actually the Linda Ronstadt version I grew up with).

This is another late-night rush job, but I hope to come back to it in future.

Mistress Dyer in Springtime

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget to play.

The taste of first greens, sharp-bitter,

and always the salt of the bay.

As we rise before dawn, bird-music

breaking my heart with fineness.

Standing on the water’s edge

I look north towards Portsmouth still,

as if she were still there,

though she is gone, gone, bodiless,

hurried towards another choir,

the sweet music of eternal grace.

How we groan in the ache of birthing it.

The ring of shore and sea before us:

this, I think, is like the heart,

empty and full at once.

A new year come, and what is it I wait for

to turn the waters sweet again?

The tree at pasture’s edge glows yellow.

We hanged our harps upon the willows

in the midst thereof.

In the smell of grass and growth

I step in among its hanging withies

and grasp one, wrap it hard around my wrist.

So it mark me; no pain I know not already.

How shall we sing, said we, a song of the Lord

in a strange land?

          

Narragansett Bay from Newport, more or less what Mary Dyer is looking at.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite, or quote without permission.

NaPoWriMo Day 23: "The Idyll"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "I’d like to challenge you today to write a poem about an animal."

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "Time for our fourth (but not final) Two for Tuesday of the month! Pick one prompt or use both…your choice!  [1] Write a free poem. [2] Write a not free poem."

Late at night, a very hastily written attempt at something I am interested in getting at (and that came up in a discussion at the end of the "Animalia Poetica" session at the NAR conference, the wordlessness of our love for pets). Earlier today I looked up the Kundera commentary, worth reading more fully, to remember it more precisely. Kundera's insight into animal-human relationship in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and his portrait of human love for pets have remained with me for many years as the most moving and insightful words I've read on the subject, and contribute to my love for this novel.

The Idyll

No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. . . . life in Paradise was not like following a straight line to the unknown; it was not an adventure. It moved in a circle among known objects. Its monotony bred happiness, not boredom

--Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Among my cats I return;

free from language

from politics

from time itself, its terrible linearity.

Each day I tell each cat

it is the most beautiful one;

in paradise that is possible.

Each day their fur glows with approbation.

Their purring is the hum of perfect earth.

The white fur of their bellies,

turned up to the sun, is the milk,

the manna, the honey.

I bury my face to drink from it.

Bound to the world,

men mock what they long for:

such a life of bliss,

of love that never tires.

Again and again give me this moment,

as history shatters beyond the gate,

this eternal, the soft weight of it,

the paw flex, the slow blink.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite, or quote without permission.