This week I took up the Poetpourri Challenge thrown down by Donna Smith at Mainely Write. Go check out how this challenge got started here and a review of the invitation/guidelines here. You can read Donna’s poem and find links to the others that took up the challenge here.
Several poets contributed lines from various sources of found words: refrigerator magnets, novels, other poems, magazines and more. Here is the complete list of lines gathered together with their contributors and original sources:
- Buffy Silverman: “ferocious women who never bring you coffee” – refrigerator magnetic poetry
- Donna Smith: “always leave a wild song” – refrigerator magnetic poetry
- Linda Baie: “dreaming women do art in poetry” – from her pile of poetry blocks
- Buffy Silverman: “where wizards and wolves rush by in a blur of green and gold and gray” – patched together from Kate Dicamillo’s Where Are You Going Baby Lincoln
- Kay McGriff: “ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones” from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five
- Linda Mitchell: “waking the world to a new day“
- Margaret Simon: “steam that climbs like smoke from a fire” – this was in the comments the first week, and I’m not sure if it is a comment or a line… but I’m using it!
- Carol Varsalona: “fearless women reach out, connect, and find joy in life’s intertwined moments” – Connecting the word “fearless” that April had used last week.
- Tabatha Yeatts: “little chest to put the Alive in” – Emily Dickinson
- Joy Acey: “wear loose clothing and a smile” – from a thought and some connections
- Jan Godown Annino: “I feel like there should be more stories out there for girls, and I try to tell them” – a quote from Hope Larson from the book COMICS CONFIDENTIAL.
- Mary Lee Hahn: “ferocious women do not exaggerate” – from Mary Oliver’s UPSTREAM on page 109, “I do not exaggerate.”
- Brenda Harsham: “make a ferocious dinner that eats masks, drips truth and saves softness for dessert“
- Keri Lewis: “radical at their core” from her husband’s magazine, “Guns & Ammo”
- Kiesha Shepard: “ferocious women would rather drink the wind” – a line from Mary Oliver’s (Why I Wake Early) titled “The Arrowhead”
- Diane Mayr: “out of endurance, exaltation” – a line from the poem “Monadnock” by Robert Francis.
Then the challenge was to combine these various lines into a poem. Here is what I came up with after printing out the lines (thank you, Donna, for providing the list of lines ready to print), cutting them apart and playing with them.
Ferocious Women Never Do What You Expect
Ferocious women
who never bring you coffee
wake the world to a new day
where wizards and wolves rush
by in a blur of green and gold and gray.
Dreaming women
who do art in poetry
wear loose clothing and a smile,
and always leave a wild song
out of endurance, exultation.
Ferocious women
who would rather drink the wind
make a ferocious dinner
that eats masks, drips truth
and saves softness for dessert.
Fearless women
who reach out
connect and find joy in life’s
intertwined moments, forming steam
that climbs like smoke from a fire.
Ferocious women
who do not exaggerate
ignore the awful times
and concentrate on the good ones,
finding a little chest to put the Alive in.
Ferocious women–
I try to tell you
I feel like there should be more
stories out there for girls
radical to the core.
Thank you, Donna, for inviting us to join in your challenge. I can’t wait to see what everyone else created from these same words.
Each Friday, I am excited to take part in Poetry Friday, where writers share their love of all things poetry. Carol Varsalona has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Beyond LiteracyLink. Drop by and see what poetry morsels are offered this week.
Last Friday Laura Shovan shared a poetry assignment that she and others have explored: create a found poem or cross-out poem from the transcript of Donald Trump’s press conference. She mined two different poems from the transcript. You can read them here and here.
To be honest, I had been avoiding as much of the hoopla that surrounds Trump as I could–trying to find the balance between staying informed and being overwhelmed with an impending sense of doom. I was glad to have a reason to sit down with the transcript and read it myself instead of seeing it through the filter of other people’s reactions.
As I read through it, I was interested in what Trump had to say about accusations against Putin and Russia for using hacking to interfere in the election as well as Trump’s emphasis on fake news throughout. I found much of the transcript to be ambiguous and even contradictory. Those are the ideas I explore in my poem. All the words are from the transcript, though I did cut some words in the refrain to tighten it up–and I repeated the refrain to emphasize the ambiguity that I took away. Others may disagree.
RUSSIA TRUMPS US
These readings–as you know–
are confidential, classified.
I’m not allowed to talk.
I saw all the information–
It’s all fake news,
phony stuff,
didn’t happen,
an absolute disgrace.
We had much hacking going on.
I think it was Russia, but
President Putin and Russia
put out a statement:
It’s all fake news,
phony stuff,
didn’t happen,
an absolute disgrace.
Hacking’s bad
and it shouldn’t be done.
But look at what was learned
from that hacking.
It’s all fake news,
phony stuff,
didn’t happen,
an absolute disgrace.
If Putin likes Donald Trump,
guess what, folks?
That’s called an asset,
not a liability.
Give me a break.
It’s all fake news,
phony stuff,
didn’t happen,
an absolute disgrace.
If you would like to play along, you can find a copy of the transcript here.
Each Friday, I am excited to take part in Poetry Friday, where writers share their love of all things poetry. Violet Nesdoly has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Poems. Drop by and see what poetry morsels are offered this week and check out a thought-provoking video on how we spend our time.
Listen.
My OLW for this year calls me not just to hear the noise that constantly surrounds me, but also to listen for the still, small voice underneath the noise. There’s no shortage of noise to distract me–radio, television, social media. All spout a constant stream of news and outrage and entertainment. How do I make time to listen in the midst of all this noise?
I am exploring a way to listen to my daily reading from scripture by responding to what I read with poetry. Sometimes what I hear connects very directly with what I read. Other times my listening steers me toward current events both personal and national. Here are a couple of examples from my readings this week.
Response to reading Acts 10:44-48
God’s Holy Spirit flows
like a river surging
over its banks,
floods past the boundaries
of race and creed and tradition.
God’s Holy Spirit charges
past our religious rituals
to welcome outsiders
into signing God’s praise
while we gape in disbelief.
Can we keep up
or at least stay out of the way?
And one more…response to reading Matthew 12:15-21
Hope seeps through the cracks
of a crumbling foundation
as the world threatens to crash
down around our traditions
Hope whispers a promise
to fulfill justice long denied
even as leaders grasp
ever more tightly to their lust for power.
Even in the midst of darkness,
hope grows ever toward the light.
I don’t always find a poetic response, but the process of looking and responding through poetry is deepening my listening.
Each Friday, I am excited to take part in Poetry Friday, where writers share their love of all things poetry. Keri has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Keri Recommends. Drop by and see what poetry morsels are offered this week and check out a thought-provoking video on how we spend our time.
Each Friday, I am excited to take part in Poetry Friday, where writers share their love of all things poetry. Linda B. has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Teacher Dance. Drop by and see what poetry morsels are offered this week.
We have stretched out our Christmas celebrations well into the new year. After eating and enjoy yet one more Christmas dinner, I enjoyed my favorite part of the turkey–turning the leftover bones into broth that then becomes the beginning of soup simmering on the stove. As the old year turns the page into a new year, I hope I can take the scraps from last year and turn the into something delicious for this year.
Simmering Echoes
Echoes of conversation and laughter
drift through the quiet house
as empty plats stack up beside the sink.
I fill a pot with the leftover turkey bones
with nothing but bits of meat left
clinging to the bone.
I throw in chunks of carrots, onion, celery
and drown them all with water.
It simmers all day
until the vegetables are soft
and the bones fall to bits.
The aroma of rich broth
drifts through the silence
with promises of soup
to warm a cold, winter evening
and surround the table
with conversation and laughter again.