On the third day of Laura Shovan’s February 10th Annual February Poetry Project, which is centered around the theme of time, the prompt was a photo of the massive carved stone calendar of the Aztecs. Coincidentally, I have a souvenir version of that calendar sitting on the hallway shelf beside an old Seth Thomas chiming clock. Here’s the poem I wrote.
Linda has this week’s Valentine Edition of the Poetry Friday roundup at TeacherDance.
This month, Catherine challenged the Inklings to write a mathematical poem of any kind. Rather than choose a mathematical form, like a Fib or an Equation Poem, I went with a mathematical topic/vocabulary.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, AJ and volunteer for our local resource center. We take their van and pick up donations from Target, Kroger, and the Pepperidge Farms outlet store. Experiencing retail from the loading dock and storeroom side has been an eye opener. We stand waiting for our cart of donations and ponder all that…STUFF in the back room of one store in one city and when we multiply that by all the stores in all the cities, our minds are blown by what it takes to fill shelves so that consumers can satisfy their every want and need.
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings interpreted Catherine’s challenge:
Linda@A Word Edgewise
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly@Nix the Comfort Zone
Catherine@Reading to the Core
Margaret@Reflections on the Teche
Elisabeth has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Unexpected Intersections.
Early this month, I had the good fortune to attend a Zoom session hosted by Georgia Heard, with George Ella Lyon as the special guest. I jotted PAGES of “George Ella Gems,” then typed them up and cut them apart. I had a draft I liked, but then this morning, I didn’t like it. Easy enough to create a new draft! An unspoken sub-challenge this month was to put your poem into Canva. Here’s my draft for now:
Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with:
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Kelly @ Kelly Ramsdell
Andi @ A Wrung Sponge
Irene has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Live Your Poem, where you can “overhear” lots of poetry talk!
In February, the Poetry Sisters are going to try one or more Exquisite Corpse poems. We’re not sure exactly how we’re going to do them, and there’s a lot of wiggle room. Read about them, and then figure out how YOU’D like to use or be inspired by the game. We’ll share our poems on Feb. 25th, and you can, too! If you share on social media, use the hashtag #PoetryPals. We can’t wait to see what you (and we?) do with this! Have fun!
I sipped my morning tea today while dunking a just-made-yesterday spicy gingerbread biscotti. As the book title in the Unsplash photo by lilartsy says, “Life is good.”
Tabatha has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at her blog with the fantastic name: The Opposite of Indifference.
WHAT THE POMEGRANATE KNOWS
Each of us
is a vessel
containing
glittering jewels
hidden beneath
a seemingly tough skin.
Our inner selves
are chambered –
labyrinthine and complex.
We are both
sweet and tart
and we are
definitely
worth the effort.
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2022
Pomegranates are one of my very favorite fruits. Mom was an adventurous eater, and she did everything she could to pass this along to my brother and me. Whenever an unusual fruit or vegetable showed up in our small-town Safeway grocery store, she would buy it for us to try. Good memories.
Now it’s time to savor this week’s poetry offerings! Click here to add your link, and enjoy all the goodies! (EDITED TO ADD: Please forgive the messy, ad-filled link up. I could not for the LIFE of me get Mr. Linky to cooperate. I should have just gone old school.)
EDITED TO ADD: I can’t stand this linkup. Here are the links without you having to wait five seconds to see the blog post. Ugh.
Heidi gave the Inklings a tough challenge this month. She suggested that we use the “The Lost Lagoon” by Mohawk poet, Emily Pauline Johnson (d. 1913) “to build your own poem FOR CHILDREN about a treasured place that you return to again and again (geographical or metaphorical).”
The first thing I did was copy the poem into my notebook and “unpack” the poem the way we used to do weekly in my classroom. As you can see, there’s a LOT going on in this poem!
What wasn’t hard was picking my topic — the swimming pool. What WAS hard was writing a poem “FOR CHILDREN.”
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings interpreted Heidi’s challenge:
Linda@A Word Edgewise
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly@Nix the Comfort Zone
Catherine@Reading to the Core
Margaret@Reflections on the Teche
Carol has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at Beyond LiteracyLink, and the roundup will be HERE next week!
Where to begin?
There are my favorite bells in music, “The Bells of St. Geneviève”…
…and my favorite bells in film…
…and my favorite classic bell poem which contains my favorite bell word: tintinnabulation. (I so wanted to include that word in my own bell poem, but it was not to be.)
I was all over the place trying to write my bell poem this month, but my drafts kept getting closer and closer to my heart, until this memory emerged:
Carol Wilcox, at Carol’s Corner, has this week’s final Poetry Friday roundup. Let’s hold her, and all of those in the Denver area who are reeling from the recent wildfires, close in our hearts.
There are bound to be lots of bell poems around the roundup, ringing in the New Year. I can’t wait to read them all! Check out what the other Poetry Sisters came up with:
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Kelly @ Kelly Ramsdell
Andi @ A Wrung Sponge
Buffy Silverman has the Christmas Eve edition of the Poetry Friday roundup. Thanks, Buffy! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and to those who don’t, Happy Solstice!
Next Friday, the Poetry Sisters will be showcasing our poems that feature bells. Do join us, please!
Photo credit: Martin LaBar, Creative Commons photo on Flickr
Autumn Cento
Little grey dreams
holding up the hawk:
a blur in the periphery.
I’ve little time left.
Everything’s been said.
My heart is so giant this evening
following old
migratory patterns that would have been better left alone.
Someone raised a camera to capture us both in a moment;
the only gift I have to give.
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2021
SOURCES:
1. Little Grey Dreams by Angelina Weld Grimké
2. In Gratitude by Abigail Carroll
3. The Hummingbird by Blas Falconer
4. Elegy for Estrogen by V. Penelope Pelizzon
5. Rabbits and Fire by Albert Rios
6. First by Carrie Fountain
7-8. anti-immigration by Evie Shockley
9. The Vine by Laura Kasischke
10. Offering by Albert Garcia
Molly’s challenge for the Inklings this month was to try a poetry form that was new to us. I tried a tricube, a rondelet, and this cento. The definition of a cento (from poets.org) is “From the Latin word for “patchwork,” the cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets.”
I was downstairs in my “studio,” doing some stitching and catching up on episodes of The Slowdown podcast. Rather than using a concrete/old school approach (poring over books of poetry, copying down lines by hand, cutting them apart, and rearranging them into a poem), I used a digital approach (listening to the poem, copy/pasting the line I liked, and hyperlinking the poem in my list of sources).
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met Molly’s challenge:
Linda@A Word Edgewise
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Catherine@Reading to the Core
Margaret@Reflections on the Teche
Michelle has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at her blog, Michelle Kogan. She’s celebrating holidays and happy poetry news along with some of her gorgeous cards and several poems!
Take note…next week I’ll put up the signup for Poetry Friday Roundup Hosts for January-June 2022! Get ready to claim your spot!
A(nother) Year of Reading 