Poetry Friday -- It's a Clunker Exchange

Hello, Hello, Hello!

It's Poetry Friday and I'm extra happy because I'm celebrating the last day of this school year. Wheee! 

Each year, for the past several years, I've hosted a clunker exchange. I hope you'll play along this year. How? It's easy. 

• Choose any of the lines below to take as your own to weave into a poem.
• You may change the line in any way that pleases you (spelling, plural/singular, tense etc.)
• Leave a clunker line of your own as exchange in the comments

You may wonder what a clunker is

A clunker 

A clunker is a line or lines that didn't work in a particular poem. Mind you, there may be nothing wrong with the line itself. But, in the poem as it was, the line clunked...instead of sang. 

Leaving the line in the poem didn't lead to the poem's success, in my opinion as the poet.

I love Poetry Friday and I look forward to making the rounds, visiting all your blogs and reading your creative efforts. I am a much better poet for doing this. Thank you in advance. 

Clunker Lines for the Taking

• long, cold to freezy, dark time in March into late April

• and feast on sunshine

• Adorable! You still keep addresses on paper – giggles my sister 

• I’d promise to listen better this time.

• my one little word found me

• look for never-was-history/on ghost tours along cobblestone streets

• dangerous calms     before wild storms.

• I’m withdrawing like an outgoing tide/a branch pulled back/a quick and silent snake coiling.

• words tumble/from kitchen tables/leftovers/of heated conversations/that need oven mitts

• I did not vote for this so I was already in opposition

• the first shawl of true spring warmth

• so in love with the lilacs

• green lily pads float in a canal

• they don’t mind how many lives

• have lived and strolled this path.

• daisies nod hello springy stems

• autocracy growing hot/as democracy shivers in a corner.

• home / is the bridge in those photos he wants/ me to know he’s labeled for us

• I claimed green and grew into it

• Rose Weaver /carries a small pitcher/of kindness

• I was worried that I had tipped/too far into woo-woo world expecting rain/to hold a conversation with me.

• My mother’s hand-knit sweater/ I wear on days I need /to feel her arms around me.

• You could be what that star needs to mend

• I like to take a star/for a walk around the block.

• until we see our whole world crying./We ask, what do I do? What can I do?

• Quiet winter/silent entrance/snow is falling/as we sleep in

• A friend to moss/ Rust makes itself at home /in barn shadows/and junkyards

• stir stars in clockwise motion

• One nation under every god is a high bar

• I’m turning this jealous into joy for you.

• Mix the mess with a witch’s screech

Don't forget to leave a clunker in exchange in the comments below. 

Thank you, Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a God Forsaken Town for hosting this week's round-up.

Clunker in New Mexico 2024

Poetry Friday is HERE and Clunker Exchange

Hello, Hello,

I'm glad you're here. 

I'm hosting our round-up through the weekend with a clunker exchange.

A clunker exchange (guidelines) is a low-stress and fun way to get writing. Take any of my old clunky words, lines, or stanzas listed below in exchange for one of yours. Use the clunker in any way you wish to create something new! 

Linda Mitchell. Taken at the British War Museum

Ideas for how to use a clunker:

• prompt that reminds you of something else
• golden shovel
• invitation to re-write
• rhymes with?
• finish this thought

Irene Latham is hosting Poetry Friday next week. Remember she's asked for original or favorite poems about a June moon to celebrate her new book, The Museum on the Moon. 

I will be out of pocket next week, so I am posting an original moon poem on Word's padlet today. https://padlet.com/mitchellhubeimom/word-bwfgg0bqmjhf62fd/wish/2630078806

Leave a link to your Poetry Friday post in the comments. I'll organize and share out in the "old-fashioned" way by editing this post with links to all the poets. 

Don't worry about a comment for your PF link and another for a clunker...it's all good. But do remember to sign your comment so that blogger doesn't make you anonymous.

Clunkers 

• Catch a falling/Word hold/Onto it. 

• Creak/Floorboard/Someone there?/Climbing the stair?/Shriek!

• sun/rising/horizon/turning, birthing/day

• Begin with the question/ what makes a woman strong?/Strength of a woman/has more to do more with will than muscle/she needs a will to find her way/in the ‘old boys club’/of the world.

• I just need to sit with a poem 

• but I'm left holding cuttings I'm not sure where to plant.

• reaching for the sun, I break free

• two words

          falling from your

          lips as if they could wash

          away the injury

• not fighting the old
  dark and icy winter winds

furrow mountain’s brow

• rain day’s magic words

• Even one of my best friends, Merriam-Webster, is pretty terse on the subject

• We need double the poems

• she left a gap in our poem

• Where that painting stopped me/still—and I could not move

• I am no longer winsome to the Sun.

• Enjoy the early morning when one or two are up before the others

• Bacon is in the pan

• I am full of possibilities all caffeine and heat from the cabin’s stove

• Today’s goal is to fill and empty, fill and empty with cabin warmth and laughter

• Memory making

• Woodsmoke

• Leisurely cigarettes without conversation

• Minute sips of time together

Poetry Friday participants are worth reading!

Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference

Laura Purdie Salas

Carol at Beyond Literacy

Karen Edmisten

Jone Rush McCulloch
Matt Forrest Esenwine
Rose at Imagine the Possibilities
Linda at Teacher Dance
Michelle Kogan at More Art 4 All
Bridget Magee at Wee Words for Wee Ones

Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
Irene at Live Your Poem
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche

Patricia J. Franz at Reading, Writing, Wondering

Anastasia Suen 
Catherine at Reading to the Core

Linda Anderson at newtreemom

It's Coming...Clunker Exchange

Hello Poets,

Thank you, Michelle, for hosting our roundup today. I so enjoy visits to your blog.

Got clunkers? Do you have poems with words or lines that need revision...those words or lines that sound like a poem breaking down -- that clunking sound?

If yes, you're in luck-ers!

I've been hosting a clunker exchange for a few years now. It's super fun and very low-pressure writing. 

Here's how to participate:

• Select any word/line or stanza from next week's clunker list
  (I will publish it next week when I host PF)
• Next week, give me any word/line/stanza from your files in the comments.
• Sign your clunker. I'm still on Blogger and it often records comments as anonymous 
• I will work with your word/line over the summer
• You can do whatever you wish with mine -- revise, use it as a prompt, print it out, burn it--ha!
• I'll share my reworking of your clunker in the future.
  I'll give credit to the author of the clunker, of course!

There's a new poem, 'Sunflower's First Word,' on the WORD padlet...poems are piling up. https://padlet.com/mitchellhubeimom/word-bwfgg0bqmjhf62fd/wish/2624405251

Clunker Exchange '22

Hello, Hello, Hello!

Welcome to a third annual clunker exchange!

Below are lines from poems I've written over the past year that make me wince. I call them clunkers. They are a bone pile of lines that I might (probably won't) pick up and fix up someday.

In the meantime, I'm giving clunkers away! 

In exchange...give me one of your clunkers that I can work with to make into a shiny new poem. Leave one clunker from your drafts in the comment section below. Take any one clunker (or more--they are free) from my list below and use it as a prompt, a striking line, or a bit of something new you write. 

Beyond fixing!

I'd love to know if you are successful in refurbishing a clunker. 

• We don’t want you to worry/
• To light candles or say novenas/They aren’t necessary.
• It’s OK…even though I never thought I’d have to do this alone
• the spending of your hours/Autumn leaves falling fast
• There wasn’t much poetry
• then sleep ‘neath the starry sky we share
• a whole sun’s rise to share.
• I put a sprig of lilac in the bud vase
• See those stars? They have already died
• Once a blue moon, brilliance is pressed between pages of meticulous notes 
• That’s what you wrote about the green beans
• love and attention I gulped in and took for granted as air and sky and rain
• cradling clouds like morning
• except for two newcomers/slowly turning pages--
• a banquet of learning/for hungry eyes.
• and I am sweeping winter away
• new green pushes/pushes up from the ground–breathless/and running late
• Housewife-ing prescribed children, laundry, /gardening, canning, cleaning, and writing letters to home.
• But tucked inside each letter a seedling wants rain

Can a clunker be saved?

Star padlet has been updated: https://padlet.com/mitchellhubeimom/4bzbfu2cg5k7awk5 

The incredible Jan at Bookseeds Studio is hosting this week. Drop by and share some love with her. Thanks for hosting, Jan!

p.s. I'm out of pocket for a wedding this weekend...I'll catch up on posts asap!

Poetry Friday HQ &. Clunker Exchange

 Welcome poets!

It's good to see you ready to kick off your weekend with some poetry. 

Mr. Linky is all the way down at the end of this post if you would like to skip to it. I  have a couple of items to share.

1. 

I double booked. Oi! About the end of winter, I was pining for my college friends. I got in touch and begged for a get together...asap..no matter what! As you can imagine, the schedules of busy women including a college professor, school administrator, public school librarian, and full-time mother--teaching a full schedule of private piano lessons are not easy to line up. So, I quickly agreed to the first weekend that we could all meet.

annnnnnd that's this weekend. Gulp!

I thought about switching Poetry Friday hosting duties with someone else. I've done that before. But, honestly, there's never a time that doesn't impact something else. 

You might wonder, "Why are you telling me this?" 

I'm actually out-of-pocket right now. I'll be reading posts as I can get to them. Please understand it might be later than the typically punctual visit of a Poetry Friday host.

2. 

For the past couple of years, I've held a clunker exchange. It's pretty fun and the rules are simple.

I'm offering you as many of my clunker lines listed below as you would like to tinker with in exchange for one (or as many as you wish) of your clunkers. Your clunker might be a pot of gold for me! Please drop your donated clunker in the comment section below. 

I'd love to know what line you are taking from me. But, it's not necessary. I'll see if I can wrangle some verse from clunker lines that you all leave.

Clunkers: Take some ... leave some ... make them work!

• my parents wanted to see Gerald Ford speak from the steps of a plane 
  
  
• August is long of light
  
•  In a large stockpot
• Hog farmers and hop growers
• a toast of fine India rum 
• debutant called forth 
• presented as woman-ready 
• first, of the catechism, I read 
• I shake the flame out of my matchstick 
• Sun sings, give me some sugar 
• This moon has stayed out late again 
• A year, or maybe a century ago 
• Trees turned so orange the road looked blue 
• Look at these names, these fames, these… 
• Hungry wolves howl 
• Susan B. Anthony’s gravestone is covered with “I voted” stickers 
  
  
• The half-life of Halloween 
• The price tag always lies 
• what she heard fell “far short” of 
• sycamore roots gossip 
• found a bit of sunflower 
• Sometimes, rules are laid down 
• Gardeners and poets shuffle 

3. Hamish plods on into summer. He's visited with poet-politician, Sorojini Naidu in India. See at his padlet.

Found on Pinterest

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