drizzle changed
another soundtrack
freezing rain
Image by Patrick Johanneson via Flickr
Margo offered an “easy” prompt for her first Tuesday Tryouts of 2012.
In the next 12 minutes, make up as many of your own surrealistic images as you can, to add to this list. If you have difficulty, look at some surrealist paintings which to you may look wacky, but to the artists represented a truth about what they depicted. Look closely. Look again. Jot down what you see.
I Googled surrealist paintings and took a look at those that pulled at my eye. Here is my list of images:
cornucopia of mass production
hot air balloon strung on clouds
time hanging out to dry
eagles carry sheeted mountain tops
petals mate in full blossom
Aphrodite’s body but the mind of a stump
all the beauty of the world decorates my bonnet
face of a cliff and prickly mind
every morning a new egg cracks in the sky
shell-headed mermaid asleep at a tree
safe above the tsunami balancing hats fly free
The next step was:
Select a series of images from the now expanded list that seem to you to work together in a surrealistic way and create a poem. Or, choose one image to place within a poem, or to spark a poem.
I decided to choose one image to root the poem. So here goes:
Amalgamation
youth wild blighted
unblossomed branches
bark tangled red cedar and moss
every twig claws the sky
wrapped in summer birch
stripped bare breasted
dripping milky fog
body man-carved smooth
immobile
root chained
into sedimentary rock
arms braided with limbs
shouldering topiary visage
eyes and mouth knot holes
drilled by a thousand woodpeckers
rotting from silence
yet deep
secret colony of thoughts
honey amber rich
hum sweet only to the one
brave enough
to climb past her womb
Poets & Writers sends weekly prompts (if you sign up for them). About two weeks ago, this is what they sent:
Look back through the poems you’ve written this year and make a list of images or words you’ve repeated. This list will guide you toward identifying your poetic obsessions. Choose one of your poetic obsessions and write a poem that fully explores it.
I don’t have my list of images compiled yet, but I did take a look at the forms and themes from the previous year.
In forms, the top three were: haiku/senryu (no surprise there), prose, and free verse.
For themes, these are my top ten:
This was an interesting, though time-consuming task. If I’d tagged and categorized better, it might have been a bit easier. I wrote more prose than I thought, and I did not write much many months. That is one of the things I want to change this year.
When I complete that list of most used images and words, I will share them and the new poem.
Anyone else take an inventory of their posts from this past year? What did you find?
Many years ago (I’ll tell, but only if you’re brave enough to ask) I wrote this poem. I’ve actually posted it before, a little over a year ago, but I wanted it next to my most recent sonnet. I think they make an interesting pair. I’m not sure if my current self is much handier with a sonnet than my twenty-year-old self, but I’ve a fondness for this sonnet that makes it difficult to revise. (Anyone else have that trouble?) Read and enjoy. I welcome your critiques.
Upon Turning Twenty
Where is the one who loved without preference,
whose tender laugh chimed sweet like golden bells?
Where has the child gone, bright-eyed Innocence,
whose smile, so pure, the darkest clouds dispels?
For hate and sorrow overcast my sight,
and bitter knowledge grieves my waning heart:
Death’s shadows wax without my seraph light,
and in black silence you and I must part.
Truth speak, once open-hearted friend, and say,
is it my fault this child, the best of guides,
has vanished while I blindly go astray?
Is it from me my own Innocence hides?
Say those pure tones will sound my muffled soul
and an unerring love will light my vision whole.
for dVerse Open Link Night, Week 24
Not too long ago, Thomas Davis of fourwindowspress suggested I try my hand at the sonnet form. I finally took some time to pick up that gauntlet, and though I feel the poem is still clunky (and too gloomy for Christmas), I’m happy to have put a pen to paper again.
Christmas Expectations
Half a lifetime weighted by should-decree
Finds little joy in angel pomp. Tidings
Join a cacophony of haste which sings
Of abandoning soul-heart for bent knee.
No room in the that inn for dreams. Admission fee
For this cold peace, compliance and troth rings.
Sell secret self for sex and glittering things;
Unwrap regret beneath each Christmas tree.
Still shepherd heard and pondered seraph sight
And I, afraid to change, consider too–
Can I forsake this life that I have known,
Exchange this prison home where poems incite
Resentment? Will poems sow that field of view,
My hopes swaddled on a manger throne?
The Poetic Rabbit
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