Tag: Original

Poetry Friday: Bouts-Rimés

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What is a Bouts-Rimés poem? Part game, part puzzle, they are hard to get started, but once you do, the possibilities are myriad! Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Bouts-Rimés.

The Poetry Sisters shared rhymes…and then MORE rhymes when we figured out we didn’t have enough to satisfy the requirements of most sonnet types. Because our poems WOULD be sonnets. Sonnets are apparently the origin story of the Poetry Sisters, but at the beginning I was only there as audience, so I’m a late-comer to the sonnet game. Or a new-comer, as the case may be. I haven’t written many sonnets. This poem is a Shakespearean sonnet, but I also tried Petrarchan and Terza Rima.

For me, the process of writing a Bouts-Rimés poem was similar to writing a golden shovel. I picked my sonnet type, then loaded the right side of my notebook page with the rhymes that fit the sonnet (for Shakespearean: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG). I completely ignored the iambic pentameter syllable count requirement. (Call me cheater, or call me beginner. I’m fine with either label.) I chose my topic, and then started writing (and rewriting, and crossing out, and starting over). Like I said, part game, part puzzle!

Here’s what the rest of the crew came up with:

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

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

Next month, we’re writing in the style of Valerie Worth. You can learn more about Valerie Worth and read some of her poems at Spotlight on NCTE Poets: Valerie Worth, with Lee Bennett Hopkins, a post by Renée M. LaTulippe at No Water River. Join us if you’d like!

Poetry Friday: The Poem

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Margaret’s poem this week for This Photo Wants to be a Poem was beautiful. Her inspiration was the Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets, “The warble of melting snow is the river.” Though I didn’t manage to join the This Photo community, my daily pencil-scratching resulted in this poem. Thank you, Margaret, for continuing to inspire us with gorgeous photos and your mentor texts.

Bridget has this week’s Dance Party (aka Poetry Friday Roundup) at wee words for wee ones.

Poetry Friday: Ordinary

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This is my prayer for the world: may you have a day or at least a moment of ordinary. In the midst of cleaning acorns out from under the cranberry viburnum, may you find the smallest flower ever. Sitting at your kitchen table, may you have a moment to notice the way the sun moves through the room and perhaps write about it. May the cat wake you up way too early, just like usual, but may you get another hour of sleep before the alarm goes off.

For the people of Ukraine, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel: I see your unimaginable suffering, and from my place of privilege I offer the most humble prayer from one human heart to another: today may you have at least a moment of ordinary. And may someone in your life bring you the love and caring I’m feeling for you now.

Catherine has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Reading to the Core.

Poetry Friday: Visual Frameworks

When I ran across the Visual Frameworks site, I immediately added it to my list of possible prompts for the Inklings. Not only are the visuals compelling, the text that follows each is thought-provoking.

My first drafts explored all the possible ways to use a framework. For Coordinates, I wrote a haiku based on the image, then an erasure poem from the text.

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But my favorite is the poem I wrote for Disrupt the Flow.

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Check out how the other Inklings met my challenge:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Heidi (is currently on blog hiatus)
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche

Matt has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme. And there’s been a change for next week. On October 13, Catherine will be hosting at Reading to the Core.

Poetry Friday: Diminishing Verse

Basil, oil, pecans, and garlic all go into the blender.
Summer is a giver, not a lender –
her heat the beginner, her pesto the ender.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2023

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The Poetry Sisters wrote diminishing verse poems this month. Thank goodness I got started early fiddling with drafts and studying mentor texts because the last couple of weeks have been a lot. In all good ways.

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

Jama has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

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.