2105 Sound Poem Project Day 7 and 8: Endangered Sounds and Waves

Greetings from New Mexico, everyone!

Today is Day 8 of Author Amok's 2015 poem-a-day project.

We are spending February writing in response to sounds. I’ve spent the last two days skiing and visiting the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, so I'm posting both the Day 7 and Day 8 responses tonight.

For a full description of the project and how to participate, please read this post. I hope you'll join us. I'll continue posting poems from Days 5 and 6 as they come in.

I’m having an amazing visit with my friend Jennifer Lewis. It’s my first time in the Southwest. Here are some of the views.

View from Jen's house on the Sandia Mountains.

Hiking slot canyons at Tent Rocks
National Monument.

New Mexican landscape and light.

Jen and I have a few sounds – special to this area of the country – that we’ve prepared for you. I’ll post those with the week three and week four prompts. Tomorrow, I travel home to Maryland. Look for the Day 9 and 10 poems on Tuesday.

Our Day 7 prompt was to pick the sound of your choice from the online Museum of Endangered Sounds.

Patricia VanAmbug chose the dial sound from a rotary phone.

Missing Link

By Patricia VanAmburg

Rotary dials made

zippery sounds to keep us

clearly connected

The Teletype spoke to Diane Mayr of Random Noodling. She writes, “I ended up working 12 years for the company and not long after I left, the rise of the personal computer basically drove the final nail in the coffin of computer time-sharing.”

Cutting Edge
by Diane Mayr

In '74 I was in the accounting
department of a business
selling computer time-sharing
to other businesses.

Technology's cutting edge.

The mainframes were
housed in a huge building.

Air conditioners hummed
and tapes whirred all day,
all night, seven days a week.

Reports were produced on tractor fed,
132 column-wide dot matrix printers.

For the time, this was high tech stuff.

My department was housed miles
away in a smaller building.

Our electric typewriters produced memos.

Click, click, click, click, click...

We typed up invoices for services
on teleprinter machines.

Click, click, click, click, click...

Our fingers raced across adding
machines to check figures.

Click, click, click, click, click...

It was a world of clicks.
And it is gone.

But, so is the cutting edge technology
that replaced it, and the one after that...
Each improvement less noisy.

When you think about it, today's
cutting edge is actually quite dull.

For her endangered sound, Linda Baie found her own clip. I wonder, if this pest actually were endangered, how it would affect our environment.

Mosquito

Endangered?

Yes,

buzz and whine,

rais-

ing

hand,

you’re mine, you’re mine!

swat, slap,

gone this time.

Linda Baie © All Rights Reserved

Fitting for today’s endangered sound prompt, Margaret Simon has a memory poem.

Olympus Camera

By Margaret Simon

I was fifteen in the family Delta 88

vacation to see the Grand Tetons

blowing bubblegum bubbles and singing to the radio.

My father said, “If you want to be a real photographer,

we have to go to the warehouse in Denver

for the newest Olympus 35 millimeter

with aperture and focus.” 

My first real camera got me in the darkroom

with Darren, kissing

while making film come to life

under purple lights and chemicals.

High school dreams come true when Daddy buys you a camera in Denver.

We had a darkroom like this at my high school. Margaret’s second to last stanza describes a place I remember well. 

Charles Waters' poem is a great companion piece to Margaret's darkroom today.

SHUTTER SNAP

Forever images are tattooed

With a metallic snap!

(c) Charles Waters 2015 all rights reserved.

And my typewriter pantoum is also set in high school.

Learning to Type

By Laura Shovan

I learned to type

in a sunless classroom,

no light to catch

the metal keys.

In a sunless classroom,

my fingers pressed

the metal keys:

ASDF ASDF.

My fingers pressed

beyond rote patterns

ASDF ASDF,

formed real words.

Beyond rote patterns,

I saw my thoughts. They

formed visible words

letter by letter.

I saw my thoughts. They

were metal keys

forming visible words

as I learned to type.

Our Day 8 prompt was a recording of waves from Cornwall, England.

The turquoise and burnt umber in Patricia’s poem remind me of Albuquerque. I haven’t written my waves poem yet, but I’m thinking about all of the fish fossils that have been found on the plains here. Albuquerque was once home to an ocean, the WesternInterior Seaway.

The Collection

By Patricia VanAmburg

Sound box pulsing on

waves without water—

unpierced by gull or light—

no colored sea glass turned

turquoise and burnt umber

with tumbling in the scum—

no chips of polished shell

ringed like fiesta ware—

no strands of mermaid hair.

I like the way Diane Mayr’s waves poem moves from exterior, tactile images to an interior question.

Breaking on the Shore

By Diane Mayr

Sand slides from
beneath my feet.

This return flow
unnerves me, yet,
is exhilarating.

Am I stationary?
Am I moving?

Does the sea know
my line between
reality and illusion

is not so well-defined
as to be uncrossable?

You can find anillustrated version of this poem at Diane’s blog, Random Noodling.

Linda Baie’s response to the sound of waves opens with an invitation. The rhythm of this poem is evocative of waves.

Sea Song

Would you, could you

come with me?

We’ll watch and wander

by the sea.

We’ll hold the shells

washed up on sand.

We’ll jump the waves.

I’ll hold your hand.

We’ll follow birds

with our own dance,

laughing at

their zig-zag prance.

We’ll close our eyes.

We’ll feel the beat

of waves and waves

upon our feet.

And when the sun

dips low adieu,

I’ll travel home

with you, with you.

Linda Baie © All Rights Reserved

I made a diamante poem with help from Read, Write, Think's Diamante Maker.

Ocean

endless gray

moving pulling crashing

tides grasp like fingers at the shore

receding undulating enticing

unstill travelers

Waves

By Laura Shovan

Margaret Simon has been working on some poems dedicated to a dear friend. She says she likes how this poem “visually looks like the heartbeat image, too.”

Waves

By Margaret Simon

If you could draw an image of her heartbeat,

it would be the waves crashing to shore

then pushing back against the sea,

Crash, silence, crash, silence,

a beat never ending,

the sound of life

going on.

Charles Waters also captures the fleeting nature of waves in his poem.

WAVES

Gushes of aquatic shaped

Mountain ridges corkscrew

Themselves onto shore

 Leaving foamy, disintegrated

Signatures.

(c) Charles Waters 2015 all rights reserved.

Here are all of the sound prompts for the second week of February:

Sunday, February 8

The Sound of Waves

Monday, February 9

Tuesday, February 10

Wednesday, February 11

Thursday, February 12

Friday, February 13

Saturday, February 14: Recommended by Buffy Silverman.

If you'd like some poem-starters to wake up your muse, you'll find them at the bottom of this post. Drop in any time with a poem. I’ll continue to post your work throughout the month, no matter which sound you are writing in response to.

If you’d like to read what we’ve written so far, here are links to the week 1 poems:

Sunday, February 1

Read Water Wheel Poems by Laura Shovan, Margaret Simon, Diane Mayr, Linda Baie, Patricia VanAmburg, and Charles Waters.

Monday, February 2

Read Angel Chimes Poems by Diane Mayr, Margaret Simon, Laura Shovan, Linda Baie, Patricia VanAmburg, and Charles Waters. 

Tuesday, February 3

Read Knife Sharpening Poems by Diane Mayr, Linda Baie, Margaret Simon, Laura Shovan, Charles Waters, and Patricia VanAmburg.

Wednesday, February 4

Read Thunderstorm Poems by Margaret Simon, Diane Mayr, Patricia VanAmburg, Laura Shovan, Linda Baie, and Charles Waters.

Thursday, February 5 

Read Ballet poems by Diane Mayr, Margaret Simon, Laura Shovan, Patricia VanAmburg, and Charles Waters.

Friday, February 6 

Read Theremin Poems by Matt Forrest Esenwine, Charles Waters, Patricia VanAmburg, Margaret Simon, Diane Mayr, Laura Shovan, and Buffy Silverman.

Saturday, February 7: Listener's Choice -- pick your endangered sound.