A.
Michele Leslie, an accomplished writer and editor, generously offered to be the
activity editor for April. She selected
a challenging activity, which was both and interesting and an enjoyable one for
me. I really appreciate all the hard work she put
into this column.
Activity Directions--Select 7-12 poems by an author
you admire. From each of these poems,
select one word that you think would be appropriate for the poem you want to
write. Using one of these words in each line of your poem, write a 7-12 line poem
on any subject.
I
would like to thank Michele for her efforts to bring this wonderful activity
for our readers to enjoy. Her analysis
of the poems is at the end of this column, which enriches the experience. Thank
you, Elizabeth, Raamesh, Kelley and Ralph for sharing your talent for this
activity. Congratulations on your
publication!
--Karen O’Leary, Whispers’
Editor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A
Day Written in Blue
What
a precious blue day it was,
the snowbank melting
at last,
blackwater collecting in
puddles.
After
a blue boy fell into a puddle,
he
sat on a mossy hillock to dry
and
to eat honey he found in a hive.
He
tossed stones at a blue donkey
that
was ploughing the garden.
The
donkey chased him through catbriers
to
a silky blue hammock
where
he could look at the blue stars
in
the dappled sky.
Mary Oliver’s
poems: “The Summer Day,” “The Swan,” “At Blackwater Pond,” “The
Kingfisher,” “Moccasin Flowers,” “The Moths,” “Hummingbird Pauses at the
Trumpet Vine,” “The Lark,” “Egrets,” “White Night,” “Last Night the Rain Spoke
to Me,” “Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard”
By
Elizabeth Howard
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forgetting
Memories
are often miasmal, putrescent;
a squad-drill of
old complaints marching by
that
you soon wish were etherised, euthanised
lest, despondently,
you are forced to grapple
with
those; the nocturnal sounds of a forest
you
wished you didn’t set foot in; a gambit indeed
that
you played thinking it fashionable at the instant
and
now regretted... indeed with appetites for regret;
meditating on them
there is no shunya, nor do they
let
you be forgetful of them, vicious in the pursuit,
and
no, they don’t digress either to dwell on joy,
no
sir, they're silhouettes that follow, to the grave mud.
Poems from T. S.
Eliot, from http://www.poetry-archive.com/e/eliot_t_s.html and http://www.blackcatpoems.com/e/t_s_eliot.html
“The Hippopotamus”, “Hysteria”, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, “Morning
at the Window”, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”, “Sweeney Among the Nightingales”, “Aunt
Helen”, “The Boston Evening Transcript”, “Burbank With a Baedeker: Bleistein
With a Cigar”, “The Burial of the Dead”, “Conversation Galante”, and “A Cooking
Egg.”
By
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Golden
Glow
In
the charcoal embers
of
illness, satin gifts arrive.
Words
sewn into a quilt,
knotted with
blessings
and
loving wishes.
Sorrows melt as
I read
friendships’ blossoms
and
feel their rainbows.
Underlined
words are from haiku in dandelion seeds by Arvinder Kaur,
pages 18-27.
By
Karen O’Leary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Owl, lost
Your
face watched me, your eyes of a lonely girl turning away
side
after side, looking over one shoulder then the other
to
draw me from the basin within the tree that hid your children.
When
you left the branch it swayed so little I wondered if I had seen you at all,
then
your gaze locked mine from another part of the forest
tearing my gaze again
from the dark eyes of your young ones.
Now
your tree seems empty, its opening a mouth twisted in a laugh,
the
autumn leaves covering that mouth like the palms of a hundred
hands.
No
young ones, no bones or ruffled snags of fur fallen beneath
your ledge.
Nothing
but sanddust and darkness.
I
want to see you. I want to hear you calling in the night. That silken whisper.
Even
if it is not me you call. Even if it is me, and the night grows short.
I learned of
Shakila Azizzada from the website http://www.napowrimo.net/ which
has been featuring a poet in translation along with daily ‘prompts’ for poems during
national poetry month. It was a double challenge of sorts! Reading the
beautiful poems of this poet and then turning a few words into my own little
effort. I do hope that the style of the poems reflects her style just a little.
. .I intend to read more of her work and find inspiration! The poems were
translated by Mimi Khalvati & Zuzanna Olszerska
By
Kelley White
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The
Churchwarden
(St James’,
Cooling Kent)
All
around, death imbued him to his bones:
From
his mother’s headstone
And
in the gloaming, his sisters, resting side by side.
What
phantom, sails this windswept marshland,
Through
distant landscapes, and shifting sand?
There!
a convict ship moors, full of those with troubled souls.
Within
the deepening sounds of evensong,
And
under crimson skies, he still tends and longs;
But
death has claimed him:
By
the whispers of angels, when they sing,
There
to abide by his side, these stone feathers as wings.
Wilfred Owen
1893-1918 “Bones”, “Miners”, “Mothers”, “The Letter Gloaming”, “The Unreturning
Phantom”, “Six O’clock in Princess Street Landscapes”, The One Remains
Troubled”, “Asleep
Deepening”, “The Show Crimson”, “Conscious Death”, “The Next War
Whispers”, “All
Sounds Have Been of Music Feathers” and “To the Bitter Sweet-heart”
(Charles Dickens
used St James’ church, for a passage in Great Expectations, when young ‘Pip’
met the convict Magwich.)
By
Ralph Stott
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Although
I only received five poems for this activities exercise, they were, each of
them, substantial, and, I thought, well-written (whether by craft or
inspiration I cannot always tell).
One
of the themes of the poems (the poems influenced by T.S. Eliot, Shakila
Azizzada, and Wilfred Owens), was a kind of deathlike despondency. In the poem
“Forgetting,” the vocabulary sprung from “miasmal” and “nocturnal” to
“silhouettes that follow, to the grave mud.” The ambience was, then, maintained
very well by a varied and select vocabulary. As the author indicates, “there is
no” digression for joy. Not being able to forget unpleasant memories is also
part of what Eliot is about.
The
poem, “Owl, lost,” also exerts a kind of despondent ambience, with an added
intensity of emotion, and a concluding death metaphor, which is most effective.
In “The Churchwarden,” a sense of mystery exists because we cannot tell,
really, whether the main character in the poem is actually dead, or if, rather,
he is just obsessive about the graveyard. This mystery is even more effective
because of the precise nature of the words the author chose to use—for example,
what could be more tangible than a headstone? Crimson skies? Stone feathers?
The
last two poems done of this exercise are more on a happy note. “Golden Glow” is
the perfect title for Karen’s “satin gifts” in the “charcoal embers of
illness.” The reader can almost see the sorrows melt from the page as the poem
concludes with “blossoms” and “rainbows.” Elizabeth Howard’s poem continues
with an allusion to melting, and “the blue stars/in the dappled sky” bring to
mind the Biblical reference to the apple of God’s eye. We can conclude that
these poems, skillfully wrought, using some of the same vocabulary as the
better known poets from whom they chose their vocabulary, tended to purvey a
similar ambience, while, each of them, developing into a very original work of
art.
--A.
Michele Leslie, Whispers’ April Activity
Editor
