This month, Linda (A Word Edgewise) challenged the Inklings to “Find or write a poem in any form of any length for Folktale Week November 14-20, 2022.” I came up with three that are worth sharing.
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All three poems came as surprises. The first is the most nonsensical poem of truth I’ve ever written. I think it might have its seeds in Kelly Barnhill’s new book for adults When Women Were Dragons, a book I HIGHLY recommend. The second, though the briefest, was the hardest to get just right (not surprising, actually). And the third? Well, after all the struggle I put into my dansa for last week, I surprised myself by writing another!
Here’s how the rest of the crew met Linda’s challenge:
This month the Poetry Sisters wrote Dansas. This form features an opening quintrain (5 lines) is followed by quatrains (4 lines), with a quintrain rhyme scheme of AbbaA and the quatrain bbaA.
My first drafts were odes to Autumn. Somewhere along the line, my repeating line showed up and the rest just…flowed. Our planet just keeps doing what it’s tilted to do, and all of the changes we’ve made in its/our climate are irreversible. There’s no going back. A hard truth to swallow as we (hopefully, with votes galore) work to put on the brakes and do less damage moving forward.
If you’re inclined to join us, next month we’re creating recipe poems! Your choice of form, length, meter, or topic, but each poem will be an assemblage of elements, using recipe text/cooking instructions to create …something. From a recipe for disaster, to your favorite aperitif, you have a month to craft your creation and serve it forth on November 25th.
Anybody out there addicted to Wordle or Waffle? I assume that more than a few of you who like to play around with words might have climbed aboard one or more of the current word game crazes! That’s why my challenge for the Inklings this month was to write a Wordy 30 Poem. A Wordy 30 is a poem using exactly 30 letters. Each line should have the same number of letters. Each line should use one word. You might have 6 lines with 5 letters in each line (like Wordle), or 5 x 6, 3 x 10, 10 x 3, 15 x 2, 2 x 15, 30 x 1, or (most unlikely) 1 x 30. Here are mine — a 5×6 and a 6×5.
Sarah Grace has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup.
And if you want to join in with the Poetry Sisters’ challenge this month, we’re writing Dansas, described here by Cousin Tanita: Its opening quintrain (5 lines) is followed by quatrains (4 lines), with a quintrain rhyme scheme of AbbaA and the quatrain bbaA. You’ll note that A repeats because the opening line of the first stanza is the final line of every stanza, including the first.
I had planned to let nature take her course with the butterflies this year. I would provide ample milkweed and fennel, and not bring any caterpillars inside to mature and emerge in an artificial environment. Caterpillar after caterpillar was sighted…then disappeared. We had more than the usual number of bluejays at our feeder. Was I unwittingly providing them with caterpillar snacks? Guilt took over. The next two (and as it turns out, the last two) monarch caterpillars I found came inside and were raised successfully to adulthood. I’ve lost count of the number of black swallowtails we’ve raised to adulthood, but there are currently six chrysalises that will overwinter in our garage and be the first to emerge in the spring. The world is right again.
The Poetry Sisters’ challenge this month was to write a definito — a free verse poem of 8-12 lines (aimed at readers 8-12 years old) that highlights wordplay as it demonstrates the meaning of a less common word, which always ends the poem. I collected several juicy words from the Merriam-Webster word-a-day emails I get: assiduous, perspicacious, and effulgence. They all go together in a fun way when it comes to raising monarchs: it takes assiduous care and a perspicacious eye to fully appreciate the effulgence of the gold-spangled monarch chrysalis.
Last week, I shared a cento that I wrote using titles from Ada Limón’s poems in THE HURTING KIND. This week, I’d like to share an amazing gift I received as a summer poem swap. Truth be told, they were ALL amazing gifts, but this one was seriously over the top amazing! Check this out:
Poem titles for lines 1-9 1. The Thing Is 2. The Truth 3. What If 4. A Small Patch 5. A Small Patch 6. What I Know About Farming 7. Dandelions 8. Daily Alchemy 9. Dear Generation C
Wow, right? Just…wow.
And there were more gifts besides the poem box! Handmade dishcloths and scrubbers and a for-real slice of life and learning.
Gratitudes to Denise for this ever-so-thoughtfully crafted mandala-cento box and to Tabatha for organizing the swaps!
Not sure why it’s hard to get to Denise’s blog via InLinkz (is it just me?), but you can follow this link to see the haiku bookmark I made for her.
Head over to Kat Apel’s blog to “Katch up” on all she’s been up to these past few months and to see what all the other Poetry Friday Peeps have to offer this week!
Four of us Poetry Friday Peeps read and discussed THE HURTING KIND one section at a time in August. It was the best #sealeychallenge activity ever. We got more out of this book with a slow read and deep conversations than we ever would have by plowing through it in a day and checking it off our to-do list.
If you haven’t read THE HURTING KIND, I highly recommend it. Here is the book trailer with Ada Limón reading the final poem in the book.
Here is a cento I made with almost all of the poem titles in the second section, Summer. The words in italics are the only words I added.
The striking line, “You can’t sum it up. A life.” comes from the poem “The Hurting Kind” from the book THE HURTING KIND by Ada Limón.
The poem itself, in response to Margaret Simon’s gorgeous photo, is a “This Photo Wants to Be a Poem…” poem, which was Margaret’s challenge this month for the Inklings.
Here’s how the rest of the crew met Margaret’s challenge:
The Poetry Sisters wrote bop poems this month. They have three stanzas (6 lines, 8 lines, 6 lines) and a repeating refrain. Additionally, the three stanzas should 1. introduce a problem, 2. elaborate on it, and 3. solve it. Our shared refrain was “Let’s kick that can down the road.”
My first challenge was to thing of something I’d “kick down the road” without trying to fix it. Something I can absolutely do without. Well, that’s easy…dusting!
Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:
Next month, we’ll be writing Heidi’s Definito Poems: the definito is a free verse poem of 8-12 lines (aimed at readers 8-12 years old) that highlights wordplay as it demonstrates the meaning of a less common word, which always ends the poem. Join us if you’d like!
A(nother) Year of Reading 