Poetry Friday: Spring and All

Happy spring everyone! This week was the Vernal Equinox. Have you ever tried balancing an egg on the first day of spring? It works.

Soon it will be April -- National Poetry Month 2012! This year, my blog project is 30+ Habits of Highly Effective Poets.

If you'd like to sign up to share  your writing habits or rituals (the odder the better, I always say) OR if you'd like to write a short piece on another famous poet's strange or practical writing rituals, visit yesterday's post for details or send me an email at mrspoems@gmail.com. I've got some exciting children's authors and poets, willing to expose their secret rituals! My list is filling up, so sign up ASAP if you'd like to join in.

There's still time to order your free NPM poster at www.poets.org.

Meanwhile, I'll be in the garden. I have pruned the roses, hydrangea and buddleia, cut back the beautiful clematis vines that flower all over our deck, planted forsythia and begun weeding. I got my love of gardening from my mother, whose birthday is today!

There is something meditative about being in the garden. The poem I'm sharing today captures how I feel about gardening. Working the earth feeds something deep in us.

Upon the Morning

by Susan Hendrickson

I saw a woman
half submerged in the ground
sitting in the comfort of weeds
nibbling on some timothy.

She ran her teeth, berry-stained,
over the translucent green stems
entered into the sweetness of the world
that sky-bright moment.

Within her solitary warren
hugging the mysteries of the day
to herself, I knew she was me
and I knew she woke me up.

Read the rest at Pudding Magazine. I'm swept away by the poem's beautiful concluding lines.

My daughter's Rose of Sharon shrub.

Mary Lee at A Year of Reading is hosting Poetry Friday today. It looks as if her American Red Bud tree is a few days ahead of mine -- ready to bloom. It's my favorite flowering event of the year.

2012 National Poetry Month Project

Every year I -- and many other Poetry Friday bloggers -- celebrate National Poetry Month with an April blog project.

You can order a free poster at www.poets.org

In 2010, I went around the country (virtually) and visited most of the state poets laureate.

In 2011, I featured the work of 30 poets from Maryland, where I live.

This year, I am doing something different. You've heard of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. At Author Amok, we will explore 30+ Habits of Highly Effective Poets.

I am inviting poets (this means YOU) to join in. Here are the details:

In 500 words or less, describe a writing habit -- your own or that of a writer you admire (or avoid). Tried and true methods, such as William Stafford's habit of  rising at 4 AM every day to write, are welcome. Flagrantly odd, unique, weird and wacky habits are highly encouraged -- whether they are yours or you are tattling on a(nother) famous writer. Check out this post, where I learned that William Wordsworth enjoyed reciting drafts of poems to his dog. And here is a post about famous fiction writers and their habits. Disappointingly unweird.

If you would like to include a poem with your write-up, please do so. Previously published is fine, just let me know where. It must be high school friendly. Poems appropriate for younger children are also welcome. An accompanying poem is  not required.

I'm excited to say that children's authors Laura Purdie Salas (also a PF blogger) and Justine Rowden have signed on already.

Leave a comment if you're interested in participating. Counting the days to NPM!

Robo Poems: Round 2

The VEX Robotics National Championship is over. My 15-year-old flies home tomorrow morning. He had a great time, and we had a blast watching his team compete via webcast (thanks, NASA)!

On Poetry Friday, I posted several poems about robots, and animation of a robot reciting Ogden Nash poems.

Today, I thought I'd try a different kind of robot poetry -- automatic poem generators. Let's try a few.

ThinkZone's automatic poem generator lets you choose one of two themes, sea or city. Here is "my" random poem (city theme). The only creativity involved is in the title I made up for the poem.

The Cold Hustle

The cigarette shrinks like a dead light.
All cigarettes hustle cold, hot rains.
Work is a rainy street.
Slums grow like grimy hoods.
All jackhammers get misty, cold workers.

Keith Enevoldsen, author of this page, displays the lists of concrete and abstract nouns, transitive and intransitive verbs, etc. that the generator draws from. It's pretty fascinating stuff. I wonder whether traditional ("real") poets could learn from the programming behind this generator.

Here is another poem generator that's a little less random: RunoKone.com. Fill in a questionnaire first, press "Yes!" and voila, a poem appears at the bottom of the page:

Gardening

crunch London
  search for old Ellicott City to sip early spring dusk
recessed lights is pruning buddleia
my daughter is rising quickly

rest if want to eat a cupcake

somebody the barrista
not you. 

You can make a Mad-Libs style love poem at Links2Love. I admit to playing around with the line breaks a little.

My Love

Your skin glows like the clementine, blossoms Piscean

as the pear blossom in the purest hope of spring.
My heart follows your clarinet voice and leaps like a frog

at the whisper of your name.
The evening floats in on a great red tail hawk wing.
I am comforted by your blue jeans that I carry

into the twilight of castle-beams and hold next to my elbow.
I am filled with hope that I may dry your tears of soy latte.
As my earlobe falls from my sock, it reminds me of your flag.
In the quiet, I listen for the last boom! of the day.
My heated arm leaps to my tee shirt. I wait in the moonlight

for your secret raven so that we may cook as one, arm to arm,

in search of the magnificent green and mystical dough of love.

A pair of socks, knitted with love.

That one had the whole family cracking up.

And who could resist the Goth-o-Matic Poetry Generator? Not me. Fill out the form, selecting phrases for your poem. You even get to choose a Gothic image to go with it.

Alone in Darkness

The night falls in a heavy, suffocating cloak, lost are we.
The light for which you pray
flares once, then dies,
crushed by a velvet ebon nothingness.
All hope must surely perish.

Your love, no more.
How could you tear us asunder?
Spirits surround us, crying,
Sanctuary.

I feel like I am channeling Edgar Allan Poe here.

Here is some great advice from Goth-O-Matic's authors: "The pieces the Generator creates are considered copyrighted, sort of, because the words contained within it were written by someone else. This means that while you're free to post the poem on your own site, you can't take the poem and submit it to a publisher. One, it's plagiarism... two, it's ridiculous, because the Generator creates BAD gothic poetry." Amen to that.

Some others to try:

Shakespearean Sonnet Generator 

Skritter has a random poem generator App 

Diamante form (you actually write this poem yourself)

Autobiographical poem generator

After checking these out, I prefer sites where there is some interaction or choice from the "poet." Second best, sites that generate random poems, but show the word lists or reveal the patterns used for creating the poems.

And, because I am a complete geek, we will end with the Vogon Poetry Generator. (Non-geeks, this is a reference to the satirical SF classic, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.) Once again, I added a title.

Ode to a Foobly Pea

See, see the artistic sky
Marvel at its big puce depths.
Tell me, Kathy do you
Wonder why the mole rat ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel crappy.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your duinga facial growth
That looks like
A cilantro.
What's more, it knows
Your vapid potting shed
Smells of pea.
Everything under the big artistic sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm dead mouses.

It's Monday. Cure your start-of-the-work-week blues with some Vogon Poetry and remember, Don't Panic.