Word Gardens

 

Self Taught

 

I’ve learned a few lessons
about luck and life.
Sometimes, even wishing
on a star can’t keep
things from turning ugly.
You take a punch or two.
Maybe end up in
residence at a hospital.
Take time to heal.

 

Other days turn out
sweet as apple cider.
You could be wandering
in the darkest alley and
wind up at the door to
a theater playing your
favorite movie.
When that happens,
walk in and
enjoy the show.

 

 

For the 8th challenge of the 2013 Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge, Khara House asked us to cultivate a word garden then grown a poem from it.

 

A word garden is simply a collection of words that resonates with the poet. For this challenge, we had to develop our garden quickly. However, this could be an ongoing exercise.

 

We were asked to collect a minimum of 100 words and put them in a jar or some other container. I took words from random pages I reviewed in books and magazines. I also used a few that I heard in conversation. We then had to draw at least 10 words from the container and write a poem that included all of those words. My 10 words were: luck, cider, ugly, star, alley, theater, residence, punch, movie and lessons.

 

I have never done an exercise like this before. I do have a list of word combinations that I keep as prompts. Sometimes, the words end up in the poem and sometimes they are just food for thought.

 

Do you have a word garden?  Have you done exercises in which you are given a list of words to include in a poem?

 

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OULIPO

 

 

In the Driver's Seat

 

Grief
holds on
with both hands.
Can’t be shaken loose.
Handles every curve and swerve.
Won’t let go in ice or
snow, wind or rain, sleet or heat.
The hitchhiker who takes everyone for a ride.

 

The 7th challenge of the Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge is OULIPO, a philosophy that combines poetry and math. Seriously? Yes, I wouldn't kid about something like that.

 

As Khara House explains, "OULIPO is an acronym for Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, or “Workshop of Potential Literature.” Devised by the combined efforts of a French mathematician (Francois de Loinnais) and writer (Raymond Queneau), OULIPO seeks to create literary works written under constrained writing techniques."

 

There are a number of techniques of which Khara gives a sampling. I chose the Snowball, perfect for a poet who grew up in Buffalo, N.Y. In my example, each line of the poem increases by one word. I had to be careful when I was counting because I started to fall back into counting syllables instead of words.

 

Have you ever written a poem using one of the OULIPO techniques?

 

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erasure

 

For the 6th week of the Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge, the form is erasure.  The poet takes a previously written text and begins to erase text to create a poem. Color or images may be added for a visual effect.

 

I used a page from the book Kansas City Jazz From Ragtime to Bebop--A History by Frank Diggs and Chuck Haddix. I tried to keep the relationship of the words within each line accurate words in the picture, but the spaces between lines are more representative than exact.

 

I enjoyed this form and playing with some photos to go with the poem.  Here is the text:

 

hooked on the blues

 

pecking out blues on the old

upright piano

practiced on the sly

 

Seeing

great territorial bands

inspired to become a musician

 

straggling home in the early morning light

with pockets full of money

 

Finding work scarce

 

stranded in Tulsa

 

auditioning for the piano spot

"I can play those tunes."

 

"Man, we've got a cat here.

 

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Ekphrasis

 

 

 

The topic for Week 5 of the Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge is Ekphrasis. This happens to be one of my favorite types of poetry.

 

Ekphrastic poetry is poetry inspired by visual art. I prefer a broader definition that includes any art form, but the task this week is centered on the visual. Khara House challenged us to look outside the picture in putting together this week's work. I tried to think about what could be there, but isn't, as well as what is.

 

Mist-ifying

 

Liquid curtain
shimmering in
the early light.
What do you hide?
Miles of moors
Howling hounds
Terrifying sounds
Waves of ocean
Foghorns blare
Ships taking care
The waterfall
roaring down.
Noise resounds.
A neighborhood
Residents rise
at dawn’s reprise.

 

 

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le stein

 

 

 

Challenge No. 4 of the Our Lost Jungle Poetry Challenge is le stein. Khara House challenged us to write a poem in the style of Gertrude Stein.

 

Browse the link above to learn more about Stein's style. Khara gave us four cues from Stein's work to take into consideration:

1. Highly experimental
2. Word associations, while avoiding words with "too much association"
3. Very much in the present (tense and otherwise)
4. Repetition as a form of discovery

[Note: Stein did write some poems involving the moon so I chose one of my more playful moon photographs to use on this post.]

 

This has been my favorite challenge so far because I love word association. Usually, I have to rein myself in on this; but, this week, I could do as much as I wanted. Also, it seems like I am using repetition more frequently. The weakness of my le stein, as far as the challenge goes, is that it is too easy to understand.

 

Pace of Play

 

Waiting, waiting,
hating every second
of the waiting.
Feeling the weight
of staying in
the same place.
The waiting is
so frustrating.
I yearn to
look ahead and
pick my spot.
Setup and take
the next shot.
Feel the freedom
of the swing.
Instead, I am stilted.
Wilted by the
heat of the sun.
Not a shade
of shade in
which to stand
while I am
waiting, waiting
for those up
ahead to
move on.

 

 

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Terza Rima Twist

 

 

This week, the 2013 Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge is the Terza Rima with a twist.  This form was invented by Dante to structure The Divine Comedy.

 

It consists of three-line stanzas (tercets) and the first and third lines of each stanza rhyme. The last word in the second line determines the end rhyme in the first and third lines of the following tercet.

 

The challenge is to work with this structure, but give it your own twist. The twist is to be predetermined. I chose to rhyme the first word in the first and third lines and use the first word in the second line to determine the rhyme for the following stanzas.

 

Possibilities

 

Stretch until your fingertips

touch every star in the sky.

Etch their form on your skin.

 

Such brightness may blind, but

light in the right amount shows how

much opportunity lies before us.

 

Invite the newness in and

revel in the excitement of the

white hot adventure called life.

 

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An Anaphora Poem

 

 

Week 2 of the Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge gave us a chance to repeat ourselves. Week 2 of the Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge gave us a chance to repeat ourselves.

 

We were challenged to write an anaphora poem. Anaphora is the "repetition of a word or words at the beginning of two successive verses, clauses or sentences."

 

Khara House, our challenge maven, threw a fastball by us when, in the first paragraph of her blog post, she prompted us to think of a word and write it down. You guessed it! This ended up being the word we had to repeat in our poem.

 

My word is yes. (Note: I'm sure I had just started drinking my first cup of coffee when I did this exercise.) And, yes, my initial reaction was horror; but after I stopped groaning and took my head out of my hands, I decided to give my little word a chance.

 

Do you know that yes may be an adverb or a noun? That it's plural is yeses and that there are multiple definitions listed under it in the dictionary?

 

So, here is my poem with yes as the anaphoree (Yes, I made that up.):

 

That's an Affirmative

 

Yes?

Yes, it is.

Yes, I did.

Yes, that's right.

Yes, I am.

Yes, I can.

Yes!

 



(Note: Please feel free to fill in the other half of the conversation).

 

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Loose Translations

 

 

Our Wordsmith Studio friend Khara House has started a new challenge on her website, Our Lost Jungle. The 2013 Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge is going to make us "go boldly into the next frontier."

 

This year, Khara has put together forms that call for experimentation and play. The first form is the Loose Translation. The challenge is to find a poem in another language, one which you do not understand, and write a poem from it. How? Use whatever is suggested to you by the letters, words, rhythm, etc.

 

My parent poem is "Cartao-postal sem folago" by Armando Freitas Filho. Following is my loose translation:

 

Post Cards and Some Foliage

 

A natural now cues nothing

Normal parties

Pair of radios and pair of raisins

To do's with words never end

Moreover,

Enter the paradigm

and tacos are passed.

No religions relented.

Petals generally are trimmed.

A beat

Beers are replaced rapidly.

Arrangements raise our life.

A line of tired feet

Paddling in the sea

Mountains all high.

Full house regattas dive and hover.

Equal sadness.

 

I took the approach of looking at letter combinations and saying the words out loud, obviously Anglicizing the pronunciation. At first, I tried to keep a 1:1 ratio of words. I let that go pretty quickly.

 

I also decided to leave what I came up with unpolished. I suggest you go to the above link to the challenge post and read the works in the comments. There are some beautiful poems and/or lines.

 

Without even trying, I ended up using alliteration in the first line. I like to use alliteration so that didn't surprise me.

 

My favorite line is "to do's with words never end." Isn't that the truth?

 

My poem mentions food, beverages, music and nature. All things I write about.

 

At this point,  I would use this form again as a warm-up exercise. I really did have to let go and just write down what came to mind. If I tried to control things, I got no where. I also had a few laughs along the way and that is always a good thing.

 

I think the form also is a good self-prompt because you may get a line or lines that you save or turn into a finished piece.

 

Thanks, Khara, for putting together another challenge. I can't wait to see what's on tap for week no. 2.

 

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