Author: maryleehahn

Poetry Friday: Fire

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I’ve adopted Molly’s strategy of using Wordle guesses as writing prompts. Thursday’s final word sparked deeper thinking about fire. The images from Los Angeles are haunting as are the stories of the loss of Black middle class neighborhoods that embodied the American dream of generational wealth. I grieve all the non-human lives that have been extinguished and uncounted and which float now in the air as smoke and ash.

Fire destroys, yet fire is also how we describe love and passion, the urge to create, and the desire to do better. We sing around campfires and we light candles in our religions. Giant sequoias and lodgepole pines need fire in order to release their seeds and regenerate.

Fire is complicated.

Process notes:
I’ve been writing mostly haiku for the first month and a half of #poemsforpersistence, but I’m feeling the urge to return to cheritas.

Today’s poem is comprised of three linked cheritas in which I answered my question of despair, “How is this all going to turn out?!?!” with what can seem grim in stanza/poem one; with the conundrum of the two faces of fire in stanza/poem two (and I’m pretty sure you’re savvy enough to realize I’m not just writing about literal fire); with, in stanza/poem three, the necessity for some kind of answer that can be ongoing and joyous (since…see stanza/poem one).

The image is another from The Public Domain Image Archive.

Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Poetry Friday: Wandering

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Labyrinth

Left, right, left
Around and
Back
Your eyes on the path
Rhythm of steps matching breaths
In, out, in
Now the curves
Tighten and you find yourself
Here

(c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025 draft

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I didn’t write much this week, between horror of the world burning down (both literally and figuratively), the joy of TWO snow days, and the sorrow of all the goodbyes for Jimmy Carter.

I dropped this image into a blank post yesterday evening after getting a little lost (somewhat like my poem, actually) in the newly released Public Domain Image Archive. Inspired this morning by Margaret and her students, I leaned into our old friend the acrostic. Like her post title declares, “Sometimes Acrostic Form Works!”

Kat Apel has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup all the way from Australia! No snow days there right now!

Poetry Friday: Wisdom (and the Roundup is HERE!)

Welcome to the 2025 edition of Poetry Friday! I’m thrilled to host the party and I can’t wait to see what dreams, resolutions, and rituals you bring to this potluck of poetry!

My dreams for 2025 include travel, scraps of fabric that become something else, and a garden filled with more native perennials. My resolutions, which trend towards the suggestion end of the mandatory –> suggestion spectrum, involve some painting, some art journaling, some stitching, some poetry reading, and a particular bi-weekly exercise class. Our New Year ritual is to listen to Strauss waltzes all day long on our local classical radio station, then end the day watching the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert on PBS. It doesn’t feel like a new year until we’ve clapped along to the Radetzky March.

Last year, Heidi invited the Inklings to participate in her family’s Yuletide celebration with a mobile of poetry prompts for Solstice through New Year’s Day. I shared my drafts for Generosity and Laughter last year.

For this month’s Inklings challenge, we returned to the mobile for new inspiration. I chose “What wisdom do you yearn for?” on 12/30 for my poem.

Here’s what the rest of the Inklings came up with, if life gave them the elbow room this month to write:

Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core

And here’s the roundup of all the First Poetry Friday of the New Year posts:


Poetry Friday: Haibun

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for this month was to write a haibun. Here’s what the rest of the crew came up with:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe

Michelle has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at MoreArt4All.

Poetry Friday: After E. D.

Emily Dickinson’s birthday was on 12/10 and this was the poem on The Writer’s Almanac. I borrowed all of Emily’s capitalized words (except the ones that begin the lines) and created this draft of a golden shovel:

Linda has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at A Word Edgewise.

Thanks to all who volunteered to host the Poetry Friday roundup Jan-June 2025. The roundup is filled!

Poetry Friday: Begin With a Sensory Experience

Molly gave the Inklings our December challenge: “Begin with a specific sensory experience (of taste, sight, smell, sound or touch), and see where that leads you.” This is part of a prompt from James Crews’s new book “Unlocking the Heart.” The experience of seeing wild turkeys at Highbanks provided the perfect answer to her challenge.

Here’s what the other Inklings did with this month’s challenge:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
(Catherine @Reading to the Core)

Carol has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Apples in My Orchard.

The call for hosts for the Poetry Friday roundups in Jan-June 2025 is here.

Poetry Friday: Roundup Call

It’s that time again. Six-ish months have passed since last we queued up to host the Poetry Friday roundups.

What is the Poetry Friday roundup? A gathering of links to posts featuring original or shared poems, or reviews of poetry books. A carnival of poetry posts. Here is an explanation that Rene LaTulippe shared on her blog, No Water River, and here is an article Susan Thomsen wrote for the Poetry Foundation.

Who can do the Poetry Friday roundup? Anyone who is willing to gather the links in some way, shape, or form (Mr. Linky, “old school” in the comments, or ???) on the Friday of your choice. If you are new to the Poetry Friday community, jump right in, but perhaps choose a date later on so that we can spend some time getting to know each other.

How do you do a Poetry Friday roundup? If you’re not sure, stick around for a couple of weeks and watch…and learn! One thing we’re finding out is that folks who schedule their posts, or who live in a different time zone than you, appreciate it when the roundup post goes live sometime on Thursday.

How do I get the code for the PF Roundup Schedule for the sidebar of my blog? You can grab the list from the sidebar here at A(nother) Year of Reading, or I’d be happy to send it to you if you leave me your email address. 

Why would I do a Poetry Friday Roundup? Community, community, community. It’s like hosting a poetry party on your blog!

Put your request in the comments (blog URL is appreciated) and I’ll update the calendar frequently. Feel free to share this post on all the various socials.

And now for the where and when:

January
3 Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
10 Kat at Kats Whiskers
17 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
24 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
31 Jan at bookseedstudio

February
7 Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink
14 Linda at TeacherDance
21 Laura at Laura Purdie Salas
28 Denise at Dare to Care

March
7 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
14 Janice at Salt City Verse
21 Rose at Imagine the Possibilities
28 Marcie at Marcie Flinchum Atkins

April
4 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme
11 Irene at Live Your Poem
18 Jone at Jone Rush MacCulloch
25 Heidi at my juicy little universe

May
2 Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
9 Sarah at Sarah Grace Tuttle
16 Ramona at Pleasures from the Page
23 Michelle at More Art for All
30 Karen at Karen Edmisten*

June
6 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
13 Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
20 Carol at The Apples in My Orchard
27 Tanita at {fiction, instead of lies}

Poetry Friday: Two Versions

Photo by Cyndy Sims on Flickr

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I gave the Poetry Sisters this month’s challenge. We brainstormed our year of challenges in January, just after I began reading a poem a day from Jane Hirshfield’s newish (2023) book THE ASKING: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. “Two Versions” is on page 9, but can’t be found in its entirety anywhere on line, making it tricky for you to discover the ways her poem inspired our writing. Lucky for you, though, I used the structure of Hirschfield’s poem for mine. So…my poem might give you some hints, in the event that you don’t own her book (which you should, so get to an independent bookstore this weekend and help that small business survive the One Big Store that would weed out all the little stores…in a poignant analogy to my very poem).

I realized, when I was combing through the blog correcting my misspelling of Hirshfield (not sch, just sh), that I also wrote about the oak seedling murders back in May. The guilt is strong enough for two poems, apparently.

I’m not sure who’s in for this month’s challenge, but here are the Poetry Sister links just in case:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect

And here’s Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies} who has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup!

Next week is December and it will be time to queue up for roundup host positions January-June 2025. Watch for the call!

Poetry Friday: Peace

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things…

…go here for the rest of the poem, and to hear Wendell Berry read it.

Nature is helping me through each day. Also friends, community, mulching leaves, and washing windows.

#haikuforhealing (along with Jone’s #haikuforresilience) feels like…not at all enough. But then I remind myself that there is so very little right now that I have the power to change, and every little bit of peace does add up.

On the subject of every little bit of peace…I am going to back away from Threads and I am going to resist joining Bluesky. I am finding that I need less social media, not more. Instagram is enough.

Karen has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Karen Edmisten*.