I add this post from the inspiration of poems shared this evening in Redwing’s group and then seeing the Bing image on my laptop — I felt the universe was trying to tell me something... and I know we have to listen!
Poems – –Trees by Joyce Kilmer & Earth Day by Jane Yolen
Earth Day is an annual event celebrated around the world on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First celebrated in 1970, it now includes events in more than 193 countries.
Wikipedia®
Read the full post here.
Today, our featured participant is Jessie Lynn McMains.
Our featured online magazine for the day is Five South. Among their recently published poems, I’ll point you to Alina Stefanescu’s “The Home is Six Hens Which Never Lay Eggs” and Erin Carlyle’s “Moon Landing.”
Prompt: I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that uses repetition. You can repeat a sound, a word, a phrase, or an image, or any combination of things.
I started as always with the featured site. Firstly, WOW at Jessie’s site, I never did tumblr and I think I missed out!
Untitled (American Windows) by Jessie Lynn McMains is an amazing, powerful poem. The depth of detail and her voice in this poem grabbed me, I was hooked from the opening line. This poem holds its impact. It is a force. How ‘falling’ is described… left me winded!
Here are some lines which stunned me and stopped me:
smoke-
wreathed over coffee by the window-glass, blurred beneath
the bare-bulb glare in the Howard Johnson’s basement,
I’d remember him, how if I could make our own
windows, our America, they’d have the broken bottle-glass,
drought-dry grass, blur of headlights, sun-warmed suburban
aqueducts,
a bouquet of construction-paper
stars,
What a beautiful reading experience to start today!
I then read the poems from Five South. Starting with The Home Is Six Hens Which Never Lay Eggs by Alina Stefanescu, I have to say I loved the title. The unravelling narrative is encaptivating and I read it several times reading different stories in.
the trusted friendship of crimson azaleas.
I listened to Moon Landing by Erin Carlyle, it’s an intriguing poem.
It had a key
made of little raised markings—broken
beer bottles, but no way to land
on the moon.
And for once, I have the perfect starting point for today’s prompt to use repetition. I love Jericho Brown‘s poetry and his invention of the Duplex form (which works really effectively as long as you feed the right subject and incredible lines)… it does however, take some time to get this right and I have some scribbled notes of a poem which was tasked to be a Duplex, I am going back to that page today to see if I can weave some magic in.
Duplex —a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues—
Whilst I go and work on my poem, I will leave you with Jericho.
PROCESS NOTES
I absolutely love writing a Duplex, but it takes a while to get my engine ready. Today I found absolute alchemy. Some medical notes I had been holding onto (living with incurable, chronic diseases) and the form of repeated lines. It wrote itself for 6 couplets so I only had to find 1 line. I am pleased with the result and think it will join my body of work.
It is a poem about thought adjustment and it was an incredible experience writing it!
Compress difficulty into love,
Everyday throughout April I am posting an image for you to use as a writing prompt. Feel free to post links to the resulting work in the comments.
#Day 22
© Artem Gavrysh
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