Poetry Form Challenge-Lento

This is week four of the Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge. This week's form is the Lento. Click the link to learn more about this form.

For me, the most challenging requirement for this form is rhyming the beginning of the lines. This is the first time I have tried to work with this rhyme scheme so maybe it will seem easier the more I work with it. Maybe it is because of my journalism background. The lead, the beginning, is critical. It sets the tone for the rest of the story. I think the rhyme at the beginning forces you to structure the line around it more than an end rhyme does. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Here are this week's two entries:

Afternoon Dip

Water warms my soul.
Wetness cools my skin.
Waves buoy my heart
when I dive in.

Concern floats away.
Calmness moors.
Consternation is
kept on shore.



Growing Pains

Bright sun shines on the fields.
Light warms the plants and the soil.
Height of the crops signifies growth.
Might be worth the sweat and toil.

Rain hasn't come for awhile
Bain of life on the farm.
Gain the strength to withstand
pain caused by the alarm.

Jazz Haiku

This is the third week of the Our Lost Jungle Poetry Form Challenge. This week, Khara House challenged us to write haiku. If you review the guidelines Khara laid out, you will see that she didn't restrict us to the 5-7-5 format. However, she did have us stick to the traditional subject of nature. (By the way, I have mended my ways. I turned my haiku in early.)

About two years ago, I took a jazz poetry workshop from Glenn North, the poet-in-residence at the American Jazz Museum. In a post I wrote shortly after the workshop, I noted that haiku is a large segment of jazz poetry. Since then, I have noticed that jazz haiku is rarely mentioned in general discussions of haiku. I think it should be because, as Etheridge Knight said:

Making jazz swing in
seventeen syllables AIN'T
no square poets job.

So, here is one original piece:

Sarah started at
the Apollo, but finished
Sassy and too soon.

My Poetic Meter is Running in the Wrong Direction

Khara House started a form poetry challenge on her blog, Our Lost Jungle. The first challenge was to work in iambic meter. Khara explained " Iambic meters are broken down into a “foot” [also called an iamb] of two syllables, the first unstressed and the second stressed (like the word “about”)."

I guess you could say I got off on the wrong foot when I started working on my poem. I suddenly had no unstressed/stressed words in my vocabulary. Every word that came to mind was the opposite. I  thought about tweaking a few words like "on LY" or "le EFT", but decided even poetic license didn't allow that.

I needed a distraction. What, I tried to remember, is the opposite of iambic? Is it amibic?  Actually, it is trochaic meter and the trochees were winning by a landslide.

I took a break for a few days. The finished product is below. I'm sorry its late, but I was having a little trouble with my feet.

Wildfires

Ablaze, the flames
traverse the land.
The trees, the homes,
the towns consumed.
But still, among
the ash remains
a will-resolve
to recreate.


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Poetry and Baseball

Major League Baseball's 2012 All-Star Game will be played in Kansas City this Tuesday, July 10. So, I decided to do a search of poetry and baseball. Would I find anything besides Casey at the Bat?
The answer is yes!

One poem I found of particular interest is  Baseball and Writing  by Marianne Moore. Although Ms. Moore moved East at a young age, she was born in St. Louis, the other Missouri city with a Major League Baseball team. She later lived in New York and became a Yankees fan. Many of the players she mentions in this poem were the first major leaguers I remember.

She speaks of both excitement and uncertainty in both baseball and writing. Think of all the things that can happen each time the pitcher releases the ball. Think of all the choices writers have when facing a blank page. The possibilities are endless.
______

Other links:

Baseball Almanac-Baseball Poetry

Baseball and Verse, from Tinkers to Evers to Big Papi

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

John "Buck" O'Neil

Our Lost Jungle Poetic Form Challenge

Amelia Earhart

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.-Amelia Earhart

My adventure of writing poetry met up with Amelia Earhart's adventure of trying to circle the globe in late 2009. I had been writing regularly for only a few months when I went to see the movie, Amelia. I ended up writing two poems that were inspired by the movie.

July 2 will mark the 75th anniversary of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Another search for the remains of the airplane and other artifacts is scheduled to begin.  Will one of the greatest mysteries in American history finally be solved?

Related links:

Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum

The Earhart Project

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Golf-Poetry in Motion

Well, it can be! Golf is a game of tempo and timing. The ball is just sitting there waiting to be struck. So why can't a player hit it perfectly everytime?

Like Yogi Berra said about baseball, golf "is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical." There are distractions like noise, the sun in your eyes, the wind in your face and the beverage cart creeping into your peripheral vision.

Like writers, golfers are rarely satisfied with their efforts on a given day. If I'd made that short putt on No. 3, missed the bunker on No. 8, made it over the water on No. 11, stayed in bounds on No 12 and made a hole-in-one on No. 14, I'd have shot my best score ever!

Like writing, golf draws you in. No matter how poorly you are playing, you always hit at least one shot that makes you want to play again. That's because if you can hit one shot like that....

Golf

Fairways and greens
Fairways and greens
Hit the ball
those two places.
How simple it seems!
But, I see the trees
and the rough and
the sand and
sometimes there's
water that snakes
through the land.
Of course, the biggest
hindrance of all
is the way I actually
swing at the ball.


Let me know if you're a golfer or if you have some other obsession besides writing.


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Guest Poet Timothy Pettet

I am pleased to welcome my first guest poet, Timothy Pettet. I met Tim through The Writers Place. I have had the pleasure of hearing him read some of his Zero and Mona poems accompanied by music. I'll let him tell you the story...


Timothy Pettet decided to give himself a coming out party as a poet in the summer of 2000. He had been writing poetry since he was 18 or so but didn't regard himself as a poet until he was nearly 50 years old. His work has been published in several regional literary journals. Three of his poems from his narrative cycle about Zero and Mona will be appearing in the next issue of Coal City Review. It was in an effort to get a painter to participate in his coming out party that he met Jane Booth, who became his mentor and muse. The Zero and Mona poems came out of their dialogue about color and language, and Tim has written several poems in response to her painting. This painting is titled, "Adding Cream" and appears on Jane's website. The poem became known as "An Alchemy of Light" when it earned the honor of having music developed to accompany the poem. A melody by Nick Baker was adapted by Prometheus Unbound Ensemble. The poem's original title is "The Magic of Glass" and was developed in conversation with stained-glass artist, Viviane Faulkner. All rights to painting and poem are reserved.

An Alchemy of Light                        


The Magic of Glass

Added to sand,
liquefied by fire
and cooled to glass,
salts of copper
glow green
like the drapery of leaves
on a fisherman’s stream.

Salts of gold,
mixed with sand
and melted to flow
across the span
of invisible panes, flash
like the side of a rainbow trout.

Salts of cobalt
cool to the blue
of patience, allowing
the wiggle and glimmer
of a lure on the surface
to be enough – satisfaction
in the dream of the catch.


Timothy Pettet
2008