Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "For today’s prompt, write a sketch poem. My initial thought is to write a poem that’s like a sketch of a moment or an object. But you can play around with sketchy people or situations. Or just sketch something else together."
At the NAR conference today I attended a session on "The Resurgent Sonnet" and it got me eager to write more sonnets, and realizing any way I want to do them is fine and open to being well-received. It was enjoyable to hear poet Allison Joseph talk about how quickly she can knock them out and how much pleasure it gives her. So I wrote a Petrarchan sonnet for today's poem -- very quickly, in about half an hour. While I did sort of do the prompts (I admit I only got surreal up to a point, that's not my strength at all) I was more energized around formal issues. At lunchtime I also revised my "Kindred Spirits" sonnet from April 4 some more, too (not posted) -- I think that one has a real future.
Meanwhile I've decided not to resist how many lakes show up in my poems, and indeed to cultivate them as a motif. There might be a trace of something usable here.
Another Lake
In the bare corner of the notebook page
half-thinking, she sketches a familiar scene:
an oval curve, the edge of yet another lake
bordered by a fringe of spruce or pine.
A fishing boat’s half-pulled onto the shore,
the curly pen-line rippling at its side.
What else? Why not a small cabin--chimney, door--
and above, the inevitable hint of sky and cloud.
She does not draw the tiny angels trudging
the surface in sodden boots, nor the mastodon’s
tusk gleaming in its temple. She does not draw
the lost city of the Lenape with its fires smudging
darkly through the water, nor the hungry maw
of the drowned moon, that feasts on what is gone.
(Not anything I drew)
--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, quote, or cite without permission.
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