It’s Cartoon Mayhem at Author Amok today.
I am making progress on the poetry postcard birthday
project, which you may read about here.
My third attempt was in response to this cartoonish antique postcard.
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| Card by Seminole Souvenirs. |
It caught my eye because I have family living in Florida. More importantly, I cannot resist goofiness. And this
“Florida State Bird” is pretty goofy. I love his intense gaze, his needle-nose, menacing mouth, stained glass wings and those hairy antennae – nasty.
Before I get to the poem, though, I myself have been
cartoonified this week. I have to say, it feels pretty awesome.
Baltimore poet David Eberhardt has put together a reading of
“Renegade Poets” on January 6. It doesn’t take much to bring out the feminist
in me, so she will be in full-force for this reading, which happens at the
famed Minas Gallery. It’s in Baltimore’s Hampden neighborhood, favorite haunt of filmmaker John Waters and site of the annual Hon Fest.
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The artwork by Christopher Morawski strikes that perfect balance between edgy and fun. My good friend, the most excellent poet Kathleen Hellen is reading. Slangston Hughes is a fabulous spoken word artist. Alan Barysh is a new poet for me, so I'm looking forward to hearing him read.
I hope my postcard poem strikes a balance, too. No one
was more surprised than I when a certain
classical Greek hero strode into the poem and (ain't it just like a hero?) nearly wrestled it away from the poor mosquito.
The Mosquito
Its formal name is
ancient Greek.
Imagine
Odysseus plagued
by
outsized Cyclops
and
the song of
honey-throated Sirens.
In
his long years
wandering,
maybe the hero came
across
a
trial so small, so
commonplace,
as
Aedes vexans. Vexed
as he was
by
Scylla’s hunger and
Charybdis’ thirst,
Odysseus
found mosquitoes
merely
unpleasant and
tussled
with exciting
monsters first.
Laura Shovan
A note on the poem’s construction:
When it comes to prompts -- rather than those "hit on the head by the Muse" moments of inspiration -- I usually have to find a way into a poem. (See this post about on-ramps in writing.)
What's working for me is examining each post card carefully, writing down every phrase and word I find on the
front and back. That word bank is my starting point.
When I looked up “Aedes Vexans” I found out that Aedes is Ancient Greek for distasteful, unpleasant. Since I’d already made notes on the postcard artist’s monstrous portrayal of
the bug, I now had a monster and Ancient Greece. It was natural for
Odysseus to make a cameo. Heck, he nearly took over the poem.
| The marble head of Odysseus. That mosquito bite looks like it's really bugging him. http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/troyilium/tp/TrojanWarFAQs.htm |
My twelve-year-old daughter is a huge fan of Greek
mythology, thanks in part to the Percy Jackson and Harry Potter books. This
poem scored her approval. Yes!
May your Poetry Friday have no shortage of fun surprises.
Our host this week is Her Deliciousness Jama Rattigan. If we’re lucky, she may
have some leftover latkes today.
If you would like a poetry postcard for my birthday, please send your address to laura@laurashovan.com.
6 comments:
This is wonderful , clever and so well crafted, Laura! A mix of classic and goofy. What could be better?
You did it--both heroic and goofy. Their Greek name suits them well.
Only you could pull this off -- Odysseus and a mosquito? Do you think his blood tasted like grape leaves? These old postcards are proving to be fabulous prompts!
Thanks, Iza and Liz. Jama, that is a very good question. Maybe Odysseus' blood inspired that lovely phrase from the Odyssey, "The wine dark sea."
I loved Greek mythology when I was a schoolgirl, too, so I give the mosquito/Odysseus pairing two stingers up! The silly/scholarly take on the subject is so clever and well done. And what an honor to be cartoonified!
Sometimes it seems like people can take the big trials better than they can cope with the little annoyances. Would Odysseus have had road rage, do you think?
The cartoon image of you is funny ;-)
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