Thursday, May 30, 2024

Three Hearts: An Anthology of Cephalopod Poetry

Oh, my goodness--we are so close to June. Can you feel it? I've busted out my capris and sandals and am looking forward to finishing up the school year with students. 

Thank you, Janice Scully, at Salt City Verse for hosting our round-up this weekend. She is highlighting the delightful anthology Picture Perfect Poetry: An Anthology of Ekphrastic Nature Poetry for Students. This collection is anthologized by Carol J. Labuzzetta one of our Poetry Friday poets.

I've just received my copy of Picture Perfect Poetry and it is beautiful! I have a plane ride coming up and this book is coming with me. I love that I recognize so many names in the pages.

I also have a celebration--a couple of poems published in Three Hearts, An Anthology of Cephalopod Poetry, Edited by Sierra Nelson (World Enough Writers. 2024). When I perused the book I was delighted to see that my contributions rub shoulders with poets I admire. 

https://worldenoughwriters.com/Publications.htm 


Here are two poems of mine in Three Hearts.

haiku Found in A Handbook to the
National Museum
1886

1.
octopus limbs
grasp, enfold and draw in prey
of squid proportions

2.
dimensions
are valuable in the 
cold fiords

Linda Mitchell (120)


Middle School Octopus

from Octopus focus on key features for camouflage

The first day of seventh-grade is about   camouflage.
Don't do anything to be seen or heard. It   is
the deadliest whirlpool of your life. If you   used
brilliance to survive elementary school, drop it. Better   to
blend in with cephalopods, move along with suckers--be a   fool
swimming, eating, inking, like the others.   A
fish in the center of a school isn't tempting prey.   Wider
expectations for success must be met out of   range
of waking hormones and lab partners, projects, square-dancing...  of
growing undetected, passed over by bigger teen   predators.

Linda Mitchell (121)


There's a new WORLD poem on the padlet. I wish I could be more cheerful. Truth is, WORLD is struggling these days. I cannot help but to lament.

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Poetry from Michelle's Clunker

Hello to May Twenty-Fourth! 

Let's go out and play with poets in the springtime.

Michelle Kogan gave me a clunker to worth with. I've been playing with her words, "reason to hope, and time to consider." There are wonderful and complex ideas in this line.


First, a haiku

sing con vibrato
each green bud and leaf of spring
keeping time with hope


Next, a triolet

Stories of hope,
time to remember
ways we cope
stories of hope,
courage-word lifeboats
or a fire's ember
stories of hope
time to remember.

Thank you Michelle for the clunker line and for hosting our Poetry Friday round-up this week. I look forward to seeing what you're up to this busy-bee spring.


There is a new WORLD poem on the padlet. 

Inspired by Treasure Books, I've been making some paper dolls lately to unwind. So fun. This lady is a bit stiff...she was my first attempt.

Paper Princess collage, May 24, Linda M.

This lady let me know with her expression that she doesn't like any shade of orange...maybe another color on her will coax a smile.

Paper Princess collage. May 24. Linda M.



Thursday, May 16, 2024

Poetry from Patricia's Clunker Line

Hello Poets,

Except for a little sogginess, I'm still reveling in May, glorious May! Just look at these dogwood blossoms.

My friendly neighborhood dogwood blossoms...mmmmmm.


Last week I received a bumper crop of clunker lines from all of you wonderful poets! Thank you. Since Patricia is hosting our round-up this weekend at Reverie, I thought I'd play with her clunker line. It was a toughie. But, after a few mornings playing I came up with trinet (Thank you, Alan W. for introducing me to that form.

Original line: "hidden progress runs deep" Patricia Franz.


My re-working:


Trinet (Seven lines long. Lines 1, 2, 5, 6, 7 are two words long. Lines 3 & 4 both have 6 words) 


All arms

digging, slinging

beneath the surface of what’s seen

your hidden progress runs sea-deep

rocky cave

Welcome home

octopus asleep


Linda Mitchell 5/17/24



Oh, and a Skinny just for funsies.



Sometimes progress hides -- runs deep

under

the

rocks

and

under

the

creek

whistling

under

dark bridge -- progress running deep


Linda Mitchell 5/17/24



Thank you, Patricia! 


There is a tiny new WORLD poem for this week. 


Thursday, May 9, 2024

Poetry Friday is HERE! Clunker Exchange

Hello Poets,

A few years ago I started what has now become an annual activity. I call it a Clunker Exchange. None of the of poetry lines below were quite right for the poem I wrote them into. Sometimes, the line held a grammar gaff, or a spelling mistake. Maybe a metaphor didn't quite work, or any number of things that caused the line to clunk instead of sing.

Here's How a Clunker Exchange Works:
I'm giving you any of the lines below in exchange for a clunker of your own. Find a line from a poem you've revised or meant to but never got around to revising. 

I will gladly take your clunker and turn it into something new if you take one of mine and do the same. Please and thank you.

Photo Source: Jerry Lofaro



Clunkers

  •  again the notion that with
  • How to write a peace poem
  • into another world
  • only sure of light pushing her brush
  • She is gone and she is there
  • You listening,/my face deep in shadowed spaces
  • In the sunroom, our old lady faces
  • weave our own cloth. I go
  • pattern belong to each other
  • under an electric wire salad slaw
  • paints like it’s an epiphany
  • My only flaw and freedom
  • Just a little puff of spray for interaction
  • It’s an engineer’s puzzle niche
  • What is Autumn to the bee?
  • you’ve lost your way up ahead lies harm
  • wrapped up in a gift box, bag or stocking stash
  •  Joy as a prairie poppy
  • more a drawer of worlds
  • are my eyes in the mirror like his?
  • thinned and whisper wept–
  • with large or small emptiness–air space
  • I could see that the group wasn’t really helping me
  • The window radiator / sure made a bumpy seat
  • the lightning truck keys
  • You are sad and relieved at the same time
  • pinning another year into memory
  • A band that relegates bright
  • What are the odds/That you would be/The less than six degrees
  • Sunshine and short shorts
  • joy is a choice / Still I struggle
  • a dandelion dotted day
  • weedy dirt patch of writing /should never see the light of day. 


Don't forget to respond with a line of poetry from your stash that I can play with and write into something new. Remember, blogger marks some comments as anonymous. Make sure your name shows up so I can give credit to our masterpiece later. Ha!

I'm hosting the round-up this week. Please leave your links below. If you aren't familiar with Poetry Friday, check out this description here. Jump in!



Mr. Linky's Widget


Thursday, May 2, 2024

Writing from the poem of another poet

Hello May Poets,

Isn't it wonderful to be alive in May?

This month, it's my turn to challenge the Inklings to stretch with  poetry. The challenge below came from listening to Commonplace. Conversations with Poets (and other people). 

This Prompt was inspired by Episode 122: Reading Nicole Sealey’s The Ferguson Report: An Erasure

1. Label a copy of one of your poems ‘May Inkling Challenge’

2. Share a copy of your May Inkling Challenge with other members (CHANGED TO ONE OTHER MEMBER) of the group. You can snail mail or share via Google Docs.

3. Spend some time reading the poem

4. Fiddle with, play with, tinker, tear apart, be inspired or stumped by the poem shared with you

5. Write at least one poem for sharing on PF that stems from your reading/writing time on the first Friday of May

6. OR, (Going rogue is fine too)Write a poem in response to another’s reading/writing from your original shared poem.


After our group swapped names and poems, I received a poem from Catherine. It's a poem she has already published at Reading to the Core. I spent some time reading the poem silently and aloud and thinking about it.


These days, I'm enjoying how poetic form constraints can lead to surprises in writing. I turned to constraints for this challenge and limited myself to the word garden of Catherine's original work to make new poems. Except for a Golden Shovel poem. I used only the words of her original to create:


  • haiku series
  • blended with a nursery rhyme
  • elfchen
  • pensee
  • trinet
  • nonet
  • golden shovel (a striking line from the original)



Catherine's original:


In the before times,

when the world still fed on dreams,

forests filled with

hazel, hawthorn,

oak and ash

spread across the land,

sharing their gifts with all.


But dark clouds of greed

Descended on the forest.


The timeless rhythms of 

hazel, hawthorn,

oak and ash

were drowned out the the

thwack, thwack, thwack,

Of the axe.


The forest thinned

and wept.

And the world forgot

How to dream.


The forest remembers

Those dreams.

They whisper to us

On the wind

Of hazel, hawthorn,

Oak and ash.


Be still.

Listen.

They’re waiting for you.


Catherine Flynn, © 2022



Isn't the repetition of of /hazel, hawthorrn oak, and ash just dreamy?

I took that line from the second stanza as my striking line for this golden shovel.


Echo

… rhythms of hazel, hawthorn, oak and ash spread across the land



Once, rhythms

of 

wisdom circled magically in a hazel

tree who passed it to a hawthorn

who shared it with the wise old oak 

who recorded what she could with her many rings. And 

now in our manicured cities of flowering pear and ash

we forget the healing, the magic. Spread

a blanket under an old tree. Gaze up and across

its mesmerizing canopy. Feel once more the

enchantment, the rhythm that makes us one with the land


Linda Mitchell 5/1




For more inkling responses to this prompt, visit

Catherine at Reading to the Core
Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe
Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading
Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone


Last but not least, there's another WORLD poem up on the padlet. Hooray!

Thank you Buffy Silverman for hosting our round-up this week. I'm looking forward to reading lots of new and interesting poems.

Next week, I host the Poetry Friday round-up. I'll be hosting my now annual clunker exchange. Stay tuned!