OVERLOOK
On my birthday—just a few years ago—
I aimed my camera at this same view,
a forever-vista of watersheds
from Cosumnes headsprings to Crystal Range—
a panorama of great trees, to give
perspective to my 70-some years,
my small shadow. Then last year the mountain
burned. Skeleton trees; the mountain’s still there.
RETURN TO THE FIRE ZONE
Road-running up the highway finally open
again, we find plenty of solid evidence—
logging decks lining the edge of pavement
as if forever: butt-ends of dead trees
stacked symmetrically offset like letters
or notes on a keyboard no one will play.
On the fringes, thistly survivors
rising out of char and ashes.
Give gratitude for any trace of life.
Back home, can we put it out of mind?
Imagine the phantoms of forest
playing those dead keys in a freshet breeze,
stirring pine seeds and oak sprouts
to strive, to grow—spirits of a green forever.
LET IT BE
O Milkweed, your lacy pink crown
arises from among the weeds—
bur-clover, oats—I’m mowing down.
You, Milkweed of lacy pink crown,
soon wearing your butterfly gown,
arrived on flights of flossy seeds.
O Milkweed, your lacy pink crown
arises from among the weeds.
SAME OLD DAY
Shine
Over
Dark
Scrub-jay
Owns
Dawn
Shoulder
Our
Do-list
Similar
Odd
Detritus
Savor
Outlandish
Details
Same
Old
Day
FOREVER ROSES
The young man at the phone store
explained why your phone bill is
1.45 more this month:
a new tax. From behind your
masks you exchanged smiles: death &
taxes. On his forearms bloomed
roses as real as tattoos
can be, with dates in Roman
numerals. You wish you’d told
him how beautiful they are.
A SHORT CENTO ON FOREVER
The name of this street is Forever
somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond
the two of us forever
except for infiniteness.
History is a ship forever setting sail
to the dream
whistling the forever song. Then your mother
with the bluebag eyes
the forever bird, invisible
rendering death and forever with each breathing
like a fisherman’s pocket knife.
Do not be wedded forever;
that might have defined exactly.
Forever—is composed of Nows—
Sources: Geoffrey Brock, e.e cummings, Dorothy Hewett, Emily Dickinson, Tracy K. Smith, Maya Angelou, Roger Weingarten & John Companiotte
Today’s LittleNip:
FRAMED?
—Taylor Graham
Here, kept forever between walls: picture
of a sylvan scene behind
2 stout kinds of fencing.
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Here we are at the end of another week, as it brings us fine poetry and photos from Taylor Graham, who is writing about forest fires and the forever of it all. (Keep our Yosemite in your thoughts.) She has used poetry forms today: a Kimo (“Framed?”); some Blank Verse (“Overlook”); a Word-Can Poem (“Return to the Fire Zone”); a Triolet (“Let It Be”); our new form, the Acronymity (“Same Old Day”); a Cento (“A Short Cento on Forever”); and some Normative Syllabics (“Forever Roses”).
Plenty to do this weekend! Modesto’s Humor in Poetry Workshop tomorrow, as well as the Third Saturday Art Walk Open Mic in Placerville and Open Mic Poetry at Florin Square in Sacramento. Then The Poets Club of Lincoln will resume “live” open mics on Sunday. Click UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS at the top of this column for details about this and other future readings in the NorCal area.
And now it’s time for . . .
FORM FIDDLERS’ FRIDAY!
There’s also a newly dusted-off page at the top of Medusa’s Kitchen called, “FORMS! OMG!!!” which expresses some of my (take ‘em or leave 'em) opinions about the use of forms in poetry writing, as well as listing some more resources to help you navigate through Form Quicksand. Got any more resources to add to our list? Send them to kathykieth@hotmail.com for the benefit of all man/woman/poetkind!
Four of our SnakePals have written responses to this photo:
WHITE MOTHER DUCK WITH GOLDEN DUCKLINGS
—Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA
White gives birth
To gold?
How come,
How come?
Have you seen
A golden duck?
Since when?
Mother,
Is obviously white.
Has this any import
To how colors
Show in light?
The less light,
The more the gray,
Until, increasing darkness
Dims colors, away,
Into increasing
Shades of gray.
With a bright kiss,
I would wish all gray, away,
To bring in
Ultimate brightness,
In which we’d
Be at play.
* * *
Fuzzy dust bunnies
should be fuzzy ducklings.
They’d march out the door,
I wouldn’t need
a broom and dustpan.
—Nolcha Fox, Buffalo, WY
* * *
DABBLE
—Stephen Kingsnorth, Coedpoeth, Wrexham, Wales
It’s fluffy duck, my cocktail choice—
I advocaat Cointreau receipt—
an orange spirit, snaking grass,
a brood, a mood of something new.
Wild cousins, mallard, wigeon, smew,
exotic pintail, mandarin
can’t duck punt gunner, Broads side lead—
too easy bag, fall fowl, so banned.
Unsporting—why produce such guns—
that funfair sideshow fair enough;
to miss attack, we’ve learnt to duck,
or else to cock the pistol back.
So straggle row for ducking stool,
a long but weaving target shift;
recall Armada, Drake on call
from Plymouth Hoe, Mayflower quay.
The pilgrim fathers landed well,
but pioneers tend buccaneers—
way wilder west than Puritans
I see a native race subsumed.
With bullseye practice on the plains
and killing fields, but just for fun;
the freedom to bare arms and build,
became a rite to bear, not braves.
The mountain cats, both lynx and lynch,
low cotton bolls, slave weevil ways,
from triangle, unequal sides,
until some few awoke by din.
The web may flap, those currents thrash;
but is serenity above?
I wonder if the pike will rise,
devour what dabbles, unaware?
* * *
GOSLINGS MATTER
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA
over the millennia humans
have developed all kinds
of devices to count things,
whether handheld, or desktop,
or mounted in a turnstile, or
on the dashboard of a car
while the brain of a mother
goose has all the tools it needs
to account for a whole bunch
of little goslings wandering this
way and that, so that somehow,
the whole group of them follow
mama to the river, step in and
follow her
* * *
Caschwa (Carl Schwartz) also responded to last week’s Triple-F Challenge, the Double-Trouble Sonnet. I saw a shadow creeping on the floor...
MYSTERY GUEST
—Caschwa
I saw a shadow creeping on the floor,
a raw and naked fear that I abhor
what could that be if not an evil ghost?
no good would come if it consumed the host
and there it was all tucked away in dark
a chair leg screened it till its outline stark
my raving on and on about this thing
was saving all the worst for fate to bring
I turned my head away to let it go
confirmed it was still there to tell and show
dear God! I think I saw the thing again
so odd to shape shift like a harlequin
above me was a light bulb burning bright
beloved 6th sense, my own hand was the sight!
* * *
From Tom Goff today we have a more traditional form, the Shakespearean Sonnet (blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-a-sonnet-poem-form): abba/cddc/effe/gg, in iambic pentameter. Note the Volta (a “turn”, as in turn of thought or argument) between the 12th and 13th lines, though Tom doesn’t indent the last couplet, as is more common. Tom writes in Sonnet form a lot, using the various traditional types. Several of his poems will be posted in the Kitchen tomorrow; check them out. (And our thoughts are with him and his wife, Nora, on the passing of their little dog, Billy.)
PREGNANT REPLIES
—Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
When Charlie Parker speaks of Dizzy Gillespie
As “my worthy constituent,” the jab’s
Like bebop, light, but with sharp point, a pesky
Gadfly kind of “flyting.” Even that stab
Harks back to its originator, “Shakespeare”:
An earl who—helping Lyly’s Euphues
Engage the times with wit, clear and unclear—
Made jokes part of good manners’ mysteries.
And Hamlet’s “art of the put-on,” as we’d say,
Is a first fusion of madness—feigned?—with method.
Well and good to have actors “play the play’s”
Insider-traded wisecrack bouts indebted
To Hamlet for jests his victims can’t rebut,
As Emily Dickinson’s poems met with “What?”
blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-a-sonnet-poem-form
____________________
Many thanks to our SnakePals for their brave fiddling! Would you like to be a SnakePal? All you have to do is send poetry—forms or not—and/or photos and artwork to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post work from all over the world, including that which was previously-published. Just remember: the snakes of Medusa are always hungry!
____________________
•••Shakespearean Sonnet: poets.org/glossary/sonnet AND/OR blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-a-sonnet-poem-form
AND/OR:
On Monday, July 25, Genoa Barrow will be reading at Sac. Poetry Center (online). She has asked us to bring Kwansabas, poems of praise that celebrate family and African-American culture (a form devised in 1995 by Eugene B. Redmond, Sac. State poet/professor). Give it a shot, whether you can make the reading or not—49 words, seven lines, seven words per line, and no word exceeds seven letters. Got that? A celebratory set of lucky sevens:
•••Kwansaba: www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/kwansaba-poetic-forms
See also the bottom of this post for another challenge, this one an Ekphrastic Poem.
And don’t forget every Tuesday’s Seed of the Week! This week it’s “Smartphones”.
____________________
MEDUSA’S FORM FINDER: Links to poetry terms mentioned today:
•••Acronymity (dev. by Carl Schwartz): 3-line stanzas, each line starting with the same three letters: 123, 123, 123 etc. See Taylor Graham's example, "Same Old Day", above.
•••Blank Verse Sonnet: www.poetrymagnumopus.com/topic/1051-blank-verse-sonnet
•••Cento: www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/cento-poetic-forms
•••Double-Trouble Sonnet: poetscollective.org/everysonnet/double-trouble-sonnet
•••Ekphrastic Poem: notesofoak.com/discover-literature/ekphrastic-poetry
•••Kimo: www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/kimo-poetic-form AND/OR poetscollective.org/poetryforms/kimo
•••Kwansaba: www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/kwansaba-poetic-forms
•••List Poem: clpe.org.uk/poetryline/poeticforms/list-poem
•••Normative Syllabics: hellopoetry.com/collection/108/normative-syllabic-free-verse AND/OR lewisturco.typepad.com/poetics/normative-syllabic-verse
•••Sonnet Forms: poets.org/glossary/sonnet AND/OR blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-a-sonnet-poem-form
•••Triolet: www.writersdigest.com/personal-updates/triolet-an-easy-way-to-write-8-lines-of-poetry
•••Volta: www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/volta
•••Word-Can Poem: putting random words on slips of paper into a can, then drawing out a few and making a poem out of them.
For more about meter, see:
•••www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-iambic-pentameter-definition-literature
•••www.pandorapost.com/2021/05/examples-of-iambic-pentameter-tetrameter-and-trimeter-in-poetry.html
•••nosweatshakespeare.com/sonnets/iambic-pentameter
•••www.thoughtco.com/introducing-iambic-pentameter-2985082
•••www.nfi.edu/iambic-pentameter
____________________
—Medusa
***
—Public Domain Photo
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a Shakespearean Sonnet!