Poetry Friday: Celebrity Found Poems

Happy Friday, everyone.


I was at the grocery store last night and realized, at the checkout, I couldn't stop myself from scanning the celebrity magazines. Brad and Angelina's rumored wedding is off. The Teen Moms are getting married, divorced, pregnant again, put in rehab.

We all have drama in our lives. Celebrities get to share their highs and lows (okay, their crazy) with a wider circle of "friends."


What a great source for a poem. The characters and emotion are already there! All it needs is a form.


Enter, Found Poetry Review. Poet Patricia VanAmburg tipped me off to this online journal, based in Maryland. Found Poetry Review is somewhat strict in its definition of found poetry. If you're going to send them work, the source material must be provided. Making deletions from the original text is okay, but adding words is  frowned upon. Composing this kind of found poem might be a fun exercise for your high schoolers as they learn to research and cite sources.


I visited Found Poetry Review and fell in love with -- of course -- a celebrity poem. The title caught me first. How could you not love a poem called, "Fudge Pot?" And when I read the source, I loved it even more.

Mmm... the Culinary Alchemist blog is making fudge.

Fudge Pot
by Thomas Pyner


Something has happened and I want to celebrate that.
I am not sleeping. Last night
we got hot dogs. We had cheese
on the hot dogs and then I had to have pizza
and then I had to finish it off
with fudge pot.

Read the rest (and the big reveal) at Found Poetry Review.


Surprised?!

Writing a found poem can be challenging. The aim is to take the source material and put it in a form that reveals something new, either through line breaks or light editing.


Writing a celebrity found poem adds another layer. The poet must listen for idiosyncrasies in the celebrity's speech, for moments when something odd or revealing is said. The poem becomes a portrait and the name of the "sitter" is like a punchline.


Here is my rough attempt at a celebrity found poem.

Feel What I’m Singing

by Laura Shovan

 

Someone asked me the other day,

they said, Etta, you know

you had a roller coaster of a life.

But if I, if I didn’t have a roller coaster

how would I, how would I know?

How would I be able to

sing about the things?

How would I be able to

feel what I’m singing about,

the ups and the downs,

the highs and the lows

And I love, I really do

I love the highs and the lows.

I think that’s put some fat on my head.

From Women in Jazz: Interview with Etta James

Next time I'm at the grocery store, I'll have a good excuse for checking out the celebrity rags. I am looking for material, people.

Have a great weekend. Try this fudge pot cake recipe to make it a little sweeter. I hope you find some great poetry at Gathering Books. Thanks for hosting, Myra!

Friday Night Reading at Wisdom Well

I have some exciting poetry news. But first, a few updates are in order:


This weekend, we attended services for Grant Learman. Several of his teachers told stories about Grant's sly, silly humor and love of hanging out with kids his age. My kids said I should buy a tissue factory. Grant's just one of those kids you meet and think of as one of your own. (My post about his death is here.) After the service, we shared some of his favorite foods: Cheez Doodles, pizza and chocolate.

I will not be traveling to Nottingham for Auntie Mary's funeral. However, I will be there in spirit. Her daughter asked me to look for a poem for the services. Mary's love of flowers and long-term marriage to my uncle, Howard, brought Wendell Berry's "The Wild Rose to Mind."

Last piece of business. I have a new poetic obsession. I am working on something connected with photographer Francesca Woodman. Have you seen the documentary, "The Woodmans?" It's about Woodman, her artist family, and how her suicide has affected them. Highly recommended.


Now for some exciting poetry news. One of the other 100,000 Poets for Change hosts got in touch with me. Would Little Patuxent Review be interested in doing a literary exchange? Would we?! Of course. The exchange coincides with the recent release of our powerful Social Justice issue.

This weekend, we have three poets visiting from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I will be featuring their work this week.


You'll have a chance to hear Richard Krawiec, Debra Kaufman and Stephanie Levin on:


1. Friday Evening, 3/2 LPR at Wisdom Well
Our three visiting poets will be featured at a free reading, with open mic! I'm hoping we'll also have some snacks, wine and music. The reading is at a brand new wellness center that you'll want to check out -- they offer acupuncture and other healing arts.


Details:
Friday, March 2, 2012 
6:30pm until 9:30pm (Reading begins at 7, open mic at 8)

Wisdom Well 8955 Guilford Road Suite 240, Columbia Books by the featured poets and issues of LPR will be on sale. 2. Saturday workshops at The Writers Center (I'll post details soon, but you can find the workshops: Crafting Images (register here) and Ripped from the Headlines: Writing Poems about Hot Topics (register here.)) 3. Saturday evening at The Writers Center, LPR Social Justice reading with our visiting poets, and LPR contributors, including Dr. Tony Medina On to today's poem, by Richard Krawiec.        Richard is founder of Jacar Press, which supports local authors in Chapel Hill, and haibun editor for Notes from the Gean. This poem resonates for me today, as my family lets go of two important human beings. "Truly See" originally appeared at Prime Number.

Truly See

by Richard Krawiec.

 

They leave you, these ghosts,

and just when you think

they will never return

a single word aneurysm

pulls your grandmother

shuffling into sight,

wearing hairnet and apron,

smiling as she lifts the pot holders,

that memory more real

than the muted crackle

of dusk light on Fall’s red

leaves.  The sound of seizure

and your beloved

dog of twelve years pants

forward, cocks her head,

gives out a single yip, eager

for one more walk.  

Drowned swirls

Arlene’s purple-stained face

up from the whirlpool

of dish suds in the sink,

as if she’s rising

from the muddy bottom

of the lake where she took her final

sleep.  Everyone is so weary.

The ghosts miss you

as much as you miss them.

Can anyone say

what’s real?

Michael’s choir-smooth face

no longer gunshot

as you once again sprawl

on the rug whose mold

scent makes you sneeze

even now, forty years later.

He giggles the word Gesundheit.

The dog licks you hand warm.

If you don’t look closely

at the rain drizzle which spots

the darkening windows,

you can truly see

your grandmother bending

to rattle a sheet of cookies

from her gas oven; 

hear the hissing warmth.

Here is a note from Richard on using this poem as a model in the classroom:

"In this poem I was thinking about the difference between observation and memory.  Your memories often seem just as real as the day to day life you walk through.  Really, why can't a memory be just as real as an observation? We don't know enough about reality to say the reality of memory has less substance than what our senses observe."

If you or your students are using this poem as a jumping off point, Richard advises:

Free write (in prose or list form) about people, pets, places you remember.  Could be friends who moved, fields you played sports on when you were younger, etc. Try to get down as much as you can  remember seeing, hearing, smelling, etc.  When this pre-writing is done, talk briefly about what constitutes an image. Next, turn these free writes into poems by pulling out and developing the images contained within it.

Next, pick a setting from your life now.  Begin the poem, if you like, by setting your in a specific environment. Where are you, what are you doing?

Give students (or yourself) permission to try, and fail, to find their own way into a poem, Richard advises. "Otherwise you're not teaching poetry, you're teaching gimmicks."

I hope to see you on Friday evening. Be sure to bring your own writing to share.

Poetry Friday: Writing about Current Events

Crazy things are going on y'all, keeping me up at night.


News in my life: the death of my aunt, Mary; I performed at a fabulous reading last night in Baltimore's Greektown -- 60+ people (was it the free spanikopita?); my son's rugby drama; Maryland's same sex marriage bill moving forward; plus it's three AM and I still haven't written my Poetry Friday post.

Awesome series hosted by awesome Rafael Alvarez.

It's all swirly in my brain.


What do you do when the events of the day create thought loops in your head? Some of my favorite options are meditating, stress eating (does spanikopita come in chocolate?), talking it over with my family, writing about it.


This week, I heard about an online literary journal devoted to current events poetry. What a great concept. I have written a few "inspired by the headlines" poems. My friend, Shirley Brewer, has a great newspaper-line love poem, "Kentucky Valentine." (I'll have to ask her permission to share it some time.)

Using headlines for inspiration works well for high schoolers. Just grab a stack of newspapers and go leafing until something catches each writer's eye. Need model poems to look at? Read on!

For Poetry Friday, I'm sharing two favorites from The New Verse News, edited by James Penha.

The first is "Never Having Seen a Wave" by Rochelle Adams. This poem is about the European deep freeze. Visit The New Verse News to see an accompanying photo of a wave frozen in mid-crash.


Never Having Seen a Wave
by Rochelle Owens

Never having seen a wave
frozen in mid-air the glassblower

manifold images in his brain
the rays of the sun

amorphous the forms boiling forming
a floating toothed leaved plant

floating Acanthus
a Black Hole a crucible a bubble glowing

one millionth one millionth of a second
an episode

a ferocious s c a t t e r I n g
white ovals glassy crystals orbiting
never having seen a wave
 frozen in mid-air the glassblower

turning spinning blowing hail-stones
shaping winds oceans storms

storms eddying
layers of ice cracking piling lifting

molten glass swelling lifting arching
never having seen a wave

frozen in mid-air the glassblower
dipping into the furnace

around and around rolling and shaping
around and around

a gob of molten glass
melting shards spiraling flaring
glittering hot glass
amorphous dazzling light frozen

in the glassblower’s brain

The rest of the poem is here.

I shared the next poem, "On the Death of Whitney Houston," with a friend who felt that loss deeply.

Whitney came on the scene when I was a teen.

On the Death of Whitney Houston
by David Feela

The news of her death arrives
in a paper cup, bitter and dark,
barely enough to cover the bottom,
its sediment like a fine powder,
and though you know it’s fresh,
you’ve tasted this cup before.

All day her songs will play
on the radio, on the television

The rest of the poem is here.

When I heard about my aunt's death, I needed to write about it. Within a couple of hours, I had a draft of a poem. It made me feel better to read the draft at last night's event, raw as her passing is, to share a little of her story.

If you live in the DC area and this topic appeals to you, come down to the Bethesda Writers Center next Saturday (3/3). Poet Patricia VanAmburg and I are offering a three hour workshop called, "Ripped from the Headlines: Writing Poems about Hot Topics." Link for registration is here.
(Wow! Registration just went on sale.)

Have a great Poetry Friday, friends. In today's PF news, Jone at Check it Out is our host! Stop by for more poetry posts.

Poetry Friday: "Don't Go There" Odes

Happy Poetry Friday, Friends! I've got something for your high schoolers this week. It's not elementary-friendly.

I missed last week, but I have a doctor's note for the teacher.

It turns out that the pain on my lower right side is not a wonky appendix, but an ovarian cyst. I felt so ridiculous being gurney-wheeled past the ER nurse's station that I had to give them my best QEII Royal Wave. The nurses thought I had been given too much morphine. "No," I said, "I'm just naturally funny."

Little known fact: My middle name is Elizabeth, after the Queen.

There has been a trend in Poetryville over the last few years. I call it "Don't Go There" Odes. The trend has its roots in Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things -- socks, a tomato for lunch, laziness.

Lately, poets are taking the simple things to mean "things we don't like to talk about." At the last few Dodge Poetry Festivals, I have heard odes to television (Robert Pinsky), pork (Kevin Young), and toilets (Sharon Olds with a nod, I think, to Ferlinghetti's poem "Underwear").

Like an overbooked radiology lab, the Internet would not give up any information about ovarian odes. Nothing about blisters growing on that little jellyfish-head looking thingy on your insides. (Side note: my doc drew a lovely picture of the uterus and ovaries for me. It resembled an elephant wearing ovary earrings.)

The next best thing to an ovarian ode is Sharon Olds' "Ode to a Tampon." I happened to be at the Dodge Festival for this reading. You'll see her toilet ode first. Be prepared for some toilet-appropriate four-letter words. Or you can skip ahead to about 3:02 for "Ode to a Tampon." I've got a prompt after the video, so stay put!



WRITING PROMPT (HS and up):


So, brave educators. Do you dare to go there with your high schoolers? Pablo Neruda used the ode form -- not to write about grand emotions like love, or monuments (isn't there an ode to limestone) or Grecian Urns -- but to draw our attention to everyday things.

The natural next step in the life of this form is to draw our attention to so-called unmentionables and show why they are worth mentioning, even celebrating. (Odes are a great place to practice hyperbole, BTW.)

In these poems, television is a channel (!) to the past and a window to memory, we can talk about where meat comes from and why we love it, toilets and tampons -- where would we be without them?

I challenge you to write a "Don't Go There" Ode today. Maybe my cysty ovary and I will join you.

Myra at Gathering Books is our host today. Do go there, to Gathering Books, for more Poetry Friday.

National Poetry Month Issue 28

For National Poetry Month 2011, I've been posting a daily poem by a Maryland poet.

Each day, we've had a writing prompt based on the poem.

Writing Exercise (Middle School and up):
One of my favorite writing prompts is to take the title or first line of a poem and without reading the poem itself, free-write.


Let's do that today. Our exercise is a list poem/writing brainstorm with the title: What Is Possible at 6 A.M.

No cheating! Scroll down and read the model poem only after you're done writing.

Done? Okay!

Maryland poet and author Ann A. Philips is a dear friend of mine. Her poetry is dense with images and ideas. She is a master at looking at the world through different points of view.

She's also the author of a middle grade novel, If You Believe in Mermaids,,,Don't Tell. It's a gentle look at a 'tween who is questioning society's gender roles. I like that the story doesn't get caught up in sexuality -- it's appropriate for the age of the characters.

Here is Ann's poem, from which we took our "borrowed title" writing prompt.

What Is Possible at 6 A.M.

by Ann A. Philips

In the green slurry of six o'clock

before suburban curtains part,

that whirr could be the wind

over the headland, raising

the grass off its roots.

That grind could be a seal

on Prudy's Ledge. That vroom

the pound and suck of rollers

caught in the trough at Ocean Point.

Or Mace Carter motoring

out on the Henry G to pick

his traps. Those cries could be the osprey

cheating the eaglet of a prize

on the rocky beach of Christmas Cove.

The mackerel, airborne, gasps

and drowns into day.

Posted with permission of the author.

National Poetry Month Issue 26

Do you haiku?

Haiku can be a half hour lesson in an elementary school classroom --

five beats in one line

second line has seven beats

last line -- five again

-- the kind of "technically, it follows the rules of haiku" spoofed in this great Get Fuzzy strip.

Or... you can spend a lifetime studying the intricacies of this short Japanese form poem.

Continuing with my National Poetry Month of Maryland poets, we are visiting with Tim Singleton today. Tim writes a poetry column, "Poet's Corner," for one of our local newspapers, Generations.

Here's Tim's take on the 5-7-5 vs. deceptively short/actually complex form debate:

Smugly, I once thought, haiku are short, I should be able to write those... if I have some success writing them, maybe, just maybe there is more to this writer side of me that I should pursue.

What a trap! I haven't been the same since.

Small and seemingly simple, they are so much more than the easy and mistaken math learned of the form in elementary school, the 5-7-5 march toward a seventeen syllable poem that has something to do with nature.

At the core of writing haiku is the practice of being aware and turning the connection of the senses and perception into the slightest of words so that another can share - from just those words - the same experience. Incorporate the tradition elements of the form, things like kireji and kigo, and the
practice deepens.

Not an easy task, but a task full of wonder and joy, one that influences not only other forms of writing, but the very way one participates in the world.

A Selection of Haiku
by Tim Singleton

cloudburst --
a peony blossom
bows and bows and bows

introductions --
the cocktail's cold
in her handshake

(The poem above is actually a senryu -- read the definition at the Haiku Society of  America.)

lunch hour --
brows glisten
at the pepper stand

Writing Exercise
Go beyond the 5-7-5! Haiku can operate like a photograph in words. They often contain two images that create a kind of conflict, motion or story when placed next to each other in the poem. The reader has to do a little bit of work.

Look at Tim's "lunch hour" haiku. What does the glistening brow tell you about what has just happened at the pepper stand?

Marylanders -- we have our own Haiku organization. The Haiku Poets of Central Maryland.

National Poetry Month Issue 16

It happens to me all the time.

I'm in the shower, thinking about how I'm almost out of shampoo, when the poem I've been thinking about will wander into my brain. The hot water must do something to my synapses -- before I can wash the suds out of my hair, I've got lines and ideas and I must go write.

Yes, I have horrified my children by dashing for the laptop sporting nothing more than a towel and an insane look in my eye.

Today's Maryland poet is Bryce Ellicott.  The hot water does something to Bryce's synapses, too. (I'm guessing this poet is a fellow Pisces.)

Shower Sprite
by Bryce Ellicott


Why is it
I must find you
my muse, so often
in the shower?

I step in and
the water fills
my brain with words,
the calling of the thrumming
thermal rush, my hair
absorbing sentences from the flood.
I race through cleaning motions,
dash to my desk
and stand dripping, pen in hand
water running on
the page to find the
words evaporated
from my
drying
skin.


Posted with permission of the author.

High School Writing Prompt:
Write a poem addressing your Muse. Go ahead and ask her about the strange places where she turns up.

Since Bryce brought up the Muses -- three of the nine classical Muses are devoted to poetry: Calliope (epic poetry), Erato (love poetry), and Euterpe (lyric poetry).

I'll be finding inspiration today at Baltimore's CityLit Festival.

The Poe Room -- watched over by a remarkable portrait of Edgar Allan himself -- is where to go for poetry. There are readings and poetry panels throughout the day. I'll be on with a group at 10:45 AM. Hope to see you there!

National Poetry Month Issue 12

During National Poetry Month, are you looking for ways to add poetry to your English/Language Arts classroom?

One of my favorite suggestions is to use a poem when you introduce a new work of literature. My students and I used to read "The Funeral," by Gordon Parks before diving into his novel, The Learning Tree.

The poem helped generate some pre-reading discussion on themes related to the novel. At the close of the unit, we looked at the poem again and saw that our ideas  had developed over the last few weeks.

I've also paired W.B. Yeats' poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which helped students work deeply on the theme of aspirations vs. dreams.

Here is Maryland poet Patricia VanAmburg's poem, "World Literature." The prince of Denmark makes a cameo appearance in this poem, so why not pair it with your unit on Hamlet?

World Literature

by Patricia VanAmburg

Wherever one thing stands,

 something stands beside it.

~ Dr. Chudi Okpala

Do we read another culture with

our eyes or its own? Will either way

of looking work? Must we soften

the focus—novice seekers hoping for

an aura—gazers of stars in the night

sky whose steady stare can make light

vanish.  The camera obscura, and

our own brains, see things backwards

first—projecting silhouettes and

ghosts.  Like Hamlet, we know “there

are more things under heaven, Horatio…”

Like seers, we sense “wherever one

thing stands, something stands beside it.”

When those things fall like dominoes,

we  choose to see, or not.  Stories tell how

love and faith cure blindness—love and

faith and spit.  Spirit.  The physical thing

and the thing beside it—reading all that is.

Posted with permission of the author.