Tag: Original

Poetry Friday: A Prose Poem

Portrait of My Mother With the Letter S

Seamstress is the first word that comes to mind. She sewed so many clothes: Easter dresses, guitar recital outfits, twirling competition costumes, matching Western shirts for Dad and David for the fair, doll clothes. All of this on a Singer Featherweight.

She was no chef, though she was a foodie through and through. I remember the smell of scorched lima beans, and the macadamia nuts she secreted away on a top shelf. For a treat, we had broiled spare ribs. I know now that “spare” is the word for “this is a treat even though there’s hardly any meat on the bone.” 

She was a saver. A collector. Almost a hoarder. Miniatures, Hallmark house ornaments, glass boxes. And scissors. If I could turn back time, I would ask her – why so many pairs of scissors? Shears (sewing and pinking), embroidery, children’s, vintage, modern plastic-handled Fiskars, and so many manicure scissors. 

She was a reader. Mostly mysteries, she bought books at the library sale by the sackful. A secret code in the back cover let her know if she’d already read the book and donated it back to the library.

She gave up salt when she was pregnant with me. I don’t think I can fully appreciate this sacrifice.

She bought me private swimming lessons when I was four because I wasn’t old enough for Red Cross lessons, but I was ready to swim.

She bought me private sewing lessons so we wouldn’t squabble (she the perfectionist, me the good-enough-ionist).

I don’t remember being swatted or spanked, but there was one memorable slap when I disobeyed and walked home from school in my good shoes and was sassy about what the big deal could possibly have been. 

One winter, she drove with me out into the country to escape the lights of town so we could see the Ursid meteor shower. We lay on a blanket on the hood of the ‘60 Ford Falcon and watched shooting stars as the car’s engine warmed us, then cooled off until we had seen enough and were shivering.

By the end of her life, her body was covered in scars: hysterectomy, knee/hip/shoulder replacements, double mastectomy. Her soul was scarred by a hateful father and the early loss of her mother. She had a high pain threshold for all the kinds of pain she carried. She wanted for us the childhood she never had, failing to see us as individuals who needed our own childhoods, not hers.

I remember her standing at the kitchen sink, admiring the sunset, often calling me to come and see.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2023
After the poem Portrait of My Father With the Letter V

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Rose has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Imagine the Possibilities.

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Today begins National Hispanic Heritage Month. Check out all the different ways Hispanic Heritage is being celebrated here.

A sampling of poems by Manuel Iris, the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Cincinnati, OH can be found here.

Poetry Friday: Enjambment

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I struggled with an image to pair with my poem. I didn’t want to activate in your imagination any particular situation. So I’m curious to know, what is this poem about…for you? Who is the “I”?

Margaret challenged the Inklings to study enjambment this month. This poem got started with the sneaky way I included in-jam-meant. Then I noticed I was writing in three-syllable lines, which sort of forced the issue of enjambment. So I cheated a little, but it was still interesting to notice which lines DO have a natural pause/stop and which lines are enjambed.

I found myself noticing enjambment as I finished the Sealey Challenge. This year, I discovered a new favorite poet, Kate Baer, thanks to the recommendation of I can’t remember which one of you. I am in AWE of the way she used enjambment in this poem:

Speaking of the Sealey Challenge, here are the books I read this past week: THE RED EAR BLOWS ITS NOSE by Robert Schechter (2 days), WHAT KIND OF WOMAN by Kate Baer, WHAT HAVE YOU LOST? ed. Naomi Shihab Nye, THE PARTING PRESENT by Manuel Iris (2 days), I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL by Kate Baer, AND YET by Kate Baer (still in progress).

Speaking of enjambment and the Inklings, here’s what the rest of the crew came up with this month:

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

Ramona has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Pleasures From the Page.

Poetry Friday: At a Loss

This month, the Poetry Sisters created an Exquisite Corpse poem. We wrote an original line, then chose a second line from Linda Mitchell’s clunkers. Tanita started us off, and then each poet saw only the lines written by the person before them in the process as she crafter her two lines. Only her two lines were sent to the next person. Tanita brought the process full circle with the final line of the poem. At our monthly meeting, we all typed our lines into the zoom chat, one at a time, and watched our poem unfold, amazed at how well it held together.

Sun and light, gardening and seasons weave their way throughout our lines. And any of those could be topics for poems I would write. But the poem I found within our lines is not a poem I would have written any other way. This is not my experience, not my feelings. And yet, it feels so true. I am left wondering how I can write more poems like this on my own, pushing myself out of the comfort zone of writing about the world in front of me and the feelings inside of me. A good challenge.

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month. I’m excited to see how each of them kept/modified/jumbled/reimagined our original lines:

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

Linda B. has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at TeacherDance.

Here’s what I read this week for the Sealey Challenge: WHAT IS A FRIEND and WHAT IS A FAMILY ed. Vardell and Wong, CHAMPION CHOMPERS, SUPER STINKERS by Linda Ashman, ANIMALS IN SURPRISING SHADES by Susan J. Taylor, POETRY BY CHANCE ed. Taylor Mali, TWO TRUTHS AND A FIB ed. Bridget Magee.

Next month, the Poetry Sisters are writing Diminishing Verse poems, aka Pruning Poems. There are some mentor text poems out there if you use your favorite search engine. Here’s our best suggestion: start gathering word possibilities NOW!

The photo for this post is via Unsplash.

Poetry Friday: Ripples

In the dry garden
we contemplate raked ripples
around the rock.

In the pond
turtle raises her head.
Look! More ripples!


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2023

Last month, we went to the Japanese Festival at Dawes Arboretum east of Columbus. Their Japanese gardens are fabulous. I learned the difference between the dry garden shown above, and the wet garden. (Which really did have a turtle popping up its head!) I was honored when Margaret used this picture for This Photo Wants to Be a Poem.

Molly has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Nix the Comfort Zone.

Edited to add my Sealey reading for this past week: SINCE THE BABY CAME by Kathleen Long Bostrom, MY HEAD HAS A BELLY ACHE by Chris Harris, BLACK GIRL, CALL HOME by Jasmine Mans, TREE WHISPERS by Mandy Ross, BUGS by Shirley Raines, and two days with SOME GLAD MORNING by Barbara Crooker.

Poetry Friday: The Roundup is HERE!

Catherine’s challenge for the Inklings this month struck a deep chord with me:

Robin Wall Kimmerer teaches us that “It’s a sign of respect and connection to learn the name of someone else, a sign of disrespect to ignore it…Learning the names of plants and animals is a powerful act of support for them. When we learn their names and their gifts, it opens the door to reciprocity.” Look closely at the flowers, birds, trees, or other natural features in your neighborhood (or if you’re traveling, a new-to-you species) and write a poem about your chosen species.

The in-progress embroidery piece illustrating this post will be part of a larger textile piece exploring Robin Wall Kimmerer’s ideas about what it means to be indigenous vs. an immigrant, and ultimately, the importance of naturalization, of “becoming indigenous to place.” (Read the chapter “In the Footsteps of Nanabozho: Becoming Indigenous to Place” in BRAIDING SWEETGRASS for more eloquent details on these ideas.) I hope my poem not only expresses my love for Earth and all her beings, but also the recognition that Earth loves me back, and expresses that love in the glorious diversity of plants and animals that she’s give me to know by name and to care for and about.

Here’s what the other Inklings came up with this month:

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

And here’s this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup! Add your link and enjoy the generous offerings of others!

PS: A quick Sealey Challenge update. Day 1: A WREATH FOR EMMETT TILL by Marilyn Nelson, Day 2: FELICITY by Mary Oliver, Day 3: TODAY I AM A RIVER by Kate Coombs.

Poetry Friday: Pool Time

Pools have been a constant in my life.

What a blessing, as a child, to spend nearly every summer day at the pool! (What amazing affordable daycare the pool provided!)

I remember with vivid details every pool in every city in every phase of my life. There was even a (very brief) time when I was an open water swimmer, and I remember those two lakes, as well.

I no longer swim a mile with confident, snappy flip turns, trying to beat my own record time. I’m in the phase where the gentle whole-body movement and the controlled breathing at a leisurely pace is all I need.

What a blessing, at this end of adulthood, to still have a pool in my life! (Although you can imagine my irritation yesterday when I got to the health club and the pool was closed because the pump was down…)

The Poetry Sisters wrote monotetras this month. Lots of rules about syllables and rhymes, but fun!

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas

Jan has this week’s Full-o-Links, dragonfly-hat edition BONANZA known as the Poetry Friday roundup at Bookseedstudio.

Poetry Friday: You Might Need to Hear This

It all started with play: building quilt blocks with black and white, then realizing that I have some solids that can add pops of color that echo the splatters in the black corners.

Knowing this little quilty thing I was making would eventually have an audience through photos on social media, I wanted it to do just a little bit more good in the world than simply “look at this pretty thing I made.” I wanted it to say something that someone might need to hear. I wrote in my notebook, “I will use my art and my words to put positive messages out to the world.”

No one knew about these quilt blocks and my intentions for them except for me and the Universe.

And then, on Facebook, a former student reached out with the kind of message that reminds a teacher (or anyone, really) that we have no idea of the long-term impact of our words and actions. She wrote (in part), “will you please make me one… so that i always have something to help inspire me and that anytime my faith starts to fall i can always have something that u made in front of me to make me realize… i can do it… (and believe me when i say i need that motivation more than ever right now)”

I was already making the quilt that she needs. With the words on it that she needs to hear and remember.

Goosebumps much? I had some.

Now excuse me while I get back to the sewing machine.

Linda Mitchell has today’s Poetry Friday Roundup at A Word Edgewise.

Poetry Friday: Grow Something Beautiful

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2023

This sudoku poem has a striking line in the left-most column: “Grow something beautiful from what might seem like dirt.” This is a quote from page 120 of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, by poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy.

Heidi gave the Inklings the challenge of writing sudoku poems after I shared one back in June, and I originally got the idea from Rattle. As best I can tell, these poems are meant to contain ten(ish) haiku(ish) poems within the grid, five in the columns and five in the rows. They are fun to write, but take a good amount of fiddling.

Here’s what the other Inklings came up with this month:

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

Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Marcie Flinchum Atkins.

Poetry Friday: Love

“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer in BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

When I chose this quote for the Poetry Sisters’ June challenge, I felt its truth in my bones. Yet, when I sat down to write a poem inspired by it, I fought hard with its ideas (as the pages of notes and thoughts in my notebook will attest).

There is SO much wrong with our world. We have DONE so much wrong TO our world. The problems seem insurmountable. How could there ever be any semblance of wholeness again when we’ve obliterated entire ecosystems, coral reefs, and rainforests? Not to mention the damage done by industrial agriculture, strip mining, offshore oil rigs, and fracking. (This would be the weeping part of the quote. Or perhaps more accurately, the wailing.)

And yet, scientists and entrepreneurs are discovering and advocating for all kinds of innovative ways to heal our lands and waters and air. There is hope. But will it be enough, and in time?

What is the impetus, the motivation, the “doorway” that moves someone to work to save our plant? The cynical side of my brain says, “Well, duh — it’s money! Money and power. Nothing will change unless there’s money to be made and power to be secured.” But the optimistic side of my brain whispers, “No. It’s love. Love really is the answer: love of a place and its plants and animals is what it takes to inspire someone to save it.”

Ultimately, the whispering side of my brain won, and I found a poem that skews towards simplistic, maybe poem for children.

Love Really Is the Answer

The world is broken.
We have done it.
No dissembling –
we must own it:

global warming
mass extinctions
plastic pollution
deforestation.

Damage done;
blame accepted.
Now next steps:
how to fix it?

Many challenges: 
multiple solutions.
Some are obvious,
others unproven.

Proceed with a love
that fuels all decisions
to save species, biomes, 
habitats, and oceans.

Love your yard,
your street, your city.
Love with science
and responsibility.

Love takes commitment,
collaboration, and work.
Exactly what’s needed
to repair our Earth.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2023

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas

Irene has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Live Your Poem.

BONUS BOOK REVIEWS

LITTLE LAND
by Diana Sudyka
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2023
review copy is mine (because I loved it so much I had to own it!)

If you have admired Diana Sudyka’s illustrations for Joyce Sidman’s and Liz Garton Scanlon’s books, you will fall head over heels for LITTLE LAND. It has everything: gorgeous details in the cover and endpaper illustrations AND the book’s cover has a different illustration from its dust jacket. On the back of the dust jacket is the book’s Big Idea: “Do you know a little bit of land? No matter how big or little, you can take care of it. And when you give love to something, it will give back to you.”

The book begins with the geological history of a “little bit of land.” It is a history of the land’s change over time. But then, “…some change does not belong to the land. It belongs to people.” And we see how people have covered the land and taken from the land until the balance is tipped and change seems unstoppable. (two GORGEOUS and heart-breaking page spreads here)

But even when things seem unstoppable, unrecognizable, and beyond repair…with help and care, life and land can find a way…

The way out of this mess is reclaim our connection to the land. Sudyka even paraphrases Robin Wall Kimmerer’s important ideas about reciprocity in her author’s note: “…Earth has always shared its gifts with us and…we need to give back to it in return.”

Love really is the answer.

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If you’re more in the mood for adult books on this theme, I recommend these, by Camille T. Dungy:

More info here.

I’m only a little ways into this memoir, but I’m loving it! Readers can follow Camille’s journey in transforming her homogenous Fort Collins, CO suburban yard into a heterogenous haven for native plants and all kinds of pollinators and birds. Here’s a quote I loved:

Whether a plot in a yard or pots in a window, every politically engaged person should have a garden. By politically engaged, I mean everyone with a vested interest in the direction the people on this planet take in relationship to others. We should all take some time to plant life in the soil. Even when such planting isn’t easy.

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Camille is the editor of this book of poetry that makes a fabulous companion book to round out your reading! (And which was a gift to me from today’s PF Hostess Extraordinaire, Irene Latham! Thanks again, Irene!!)

More info here.