Poseidon's Pantone Adventures: 2014 Poetry Project

It is Day 21 of the Pantone ®  Poetry Project, Writerly Friends, and we are visiting with the god of the ocean himself, Poseidon.

Day 21 Poseidon
Pantone ®  19-4033

His mood swings are taking us from destructive Tornado...

Day 21 Tornado
Pantone ®  18-3907

to a gentle Aqua Splash.

Day 21 Aqua Splash
Pantone ®  14-4812

Tidal

By Laura Shovan

For a god with such

a fiery temper

Poseidon is cool

as blue night.

He’d like his

tidal waves colored

lava red, his anger

lit up, consuming

shores. Instead,

we humans learn

to fear the aqua splash,

watch for a rise

in the ocean’s skin,

sign of his underwater

thrust. We never know

when Poseidon’s blow

will fall blue upon us.

Let’s meet another side of Poseidon – the history of this god’s myth – from poet Patricia VanAmburg.

Gender Identity
by Patricia VanAmburg

I

Poseidon tornadoes the
surface in an aqua splash.
Wait. That is so Disney.

II

Poseidon mirrors his niece
Athena—she the mini-Zeus
dressed in drag—he the true
vestige of Mother God.
Athena of the harness—
Poseidon the horse—
riding sea waves—
mane billowing serpents—
Scylla—Charybdis—
then plunging into
the briny female deep.

by American Artist Walter Crane

We’re still in the dangerous deep -- from the safe distance of memory -- with Margaret Simon’s poem.

The Poseidon Adventure

By Margaret Simon

My brother saw The Poseidon Adventure twelve times.
A dozen times, the huge ship capsized

sending a woman screaming into the skylight.

Again and again, Shelly Winters swam to her death,

a physical sacrifice at each viewing.

This movie ignited a teenage boy’s imagination,

played over and over in his mind.

I could hear through the walls his director calls,

the score repeated on the 45 record player.

Then in ’75, he became Tommy,

The Pinball Wizard.  He must have seen that one

17 times and played the record many more.

The refusal to rest content, creativity

led him to obsession.  Obsession to passion,

passion to adventures—over and over again.

Margaret’s poem takes us into the realm of ocean and memory. Not surprisingly, for several of today’s contributors, Poseidon is symbolic of men who were giants in our lives.

Stephanie Lemghari first published this elegy for her father in Little Patuxent Review. She is remembering her father on his birthday, 2/26.

Tide
by Stephanie Lemghari

When I was a child, I stumbled on pebbles while playing
on the beach and fell into salty water. The sea raced
to steal my breath, but my father fished me up like Poseidon,
his trident arms carrying me safely to land.

Now his body betrays his mortality after all,
as, pebble by pebble, the tide pulls him from shore.
I call to him to stay, to close his ears to siren song,
to trace a different ending in the sand.

Temple of Poseidon Statue

From the sounds and tactile images of Stephanie’s poem, we move to a different sense (or – a different sense moves us) in Linda Baie’s memory poem.

Olfactory Push

By Linda Baie

My husband chose not to wear a perfumed aftershave,

rejected his father’s Old Spice, one small wave

of rebellion. Yesterday my visit to a nursing home

brought a childhood aroma, whispering from the past.

It was my father’s aftershave, a liberal splashing.

After the war, he liked to be clean, always looked so dashing.

From my little girl’s perspective, he was my favorite knight

And that Aqua (Velva) splash made everything all right.

Linda Baie ©All Rights Reserved

Some of the color names we’ve discovered have been out there. Remember Tarmac? What about Turbulence? Diane Mayr wonders what’s up with the Pantone ®  marketing department in her poem. (For high school and up only, readers!)

On Discovering a Color Called Tornado 
by Diane Mayr

You have to wonder 
what the marketers 
at the paint factory 
were high on--fumes? 
It's gotta be something. 
Think of a tornado... 

What comes to mind? 
Gunmetal gray? Bile 
yellow? White? Maybe... 
A shade of eggplant? 
Not likely. Anyone would 
say they're smokin' dope.

Tomorrow, I’ll post the Pantone ®  Poetry Project Week Three wrap-up. (Read more about the project here.) I know you’re itching like sand’s in your pants to see the last set of colors. 

Here are our last seven color prompts:

Day 22 (Tomorrow): Quicksilver, Ballerina

Day 22 Quicksilver
Pantone ®  17-3907

Day 22 Ballerina
Pantone ®  13-2807

Dust off those tutus and toe shoes, everyone.

Day 23: Solar Power, Gulf Stream, Nimbus Cloud

Day 24: Sweet Pea, Orange Ochre

Day 25: Plein Air, Syrah

Day 26: Stormy Weather, Porcelain Blue, Daybreak

Day 27: Peacock Green, Blue Jewel

Day 28: Tandori [sic] Spice

Blue Jewel.
Why don't they just call it Sapphire?
From Navneet Gems.

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: An Elegy

On Monday evening, a dear friend's son passed away. He was 15.

I first met Grant, his mother and his sister in the spring of 2002, when they joined our Moms Club playgroup. Grant and my son, Robbie, were going to be in the same kindergarten class that fall.

Kathy and I became friends -- talking about how school was going for the boys. I could sometimes provide her with day to day insights, through Robbie, into life in the classroom. Kathy appreciated these insights because Grant had cerebral palsy and Robbie was (what they call in edu-speak) typically developing.

My son is in the mashed-up  middle row. Grant is in the front row.

"Can you ask Robbie if they went outside today?" Kathy might call and ask. There was mud on her son's jeans and she had no idea how it got there. I will never forget the day she called me, thrilled, because Grant's aide had sent him home with a map. Not a normal map -- this one explained the various, multi-hued stains on Grant's T-shirt. Some came from lunch, some from an art project, some from recess.

Another time, she called me, laughing. At recess, Grant's aide had been approached by a serious little boy. He thought it would be a good idea for the two of them to ride Grant's wheelchair down the slide. That was my vehicle-obsessed son. (I drafted a picture book about this incident. Maybe I'll go back to it some day.)

Due to redistricting, the boys ended up at different schools, but Kathy and I stayed in touch. The kids saw each other for birthday parties, or get togethers, but less and less frequently. When my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, Kathy understood the frustrations of coping with the school system. She helped teach me how to be an advocate.

She also understood the process of letting go of that fantasy kid all of us create during the waiting time of pregnancy or before we take home an adopted child. We all let go of that fantasy at some point, as we parent a real, wonderful child -- a human being -- with all of his strength and weaknesses, all of her needs and wants.

Losing a child is unbearably painful. I am hurting for my friend. It was a gift to have her son in our lives. I had planned to share an elegiac poem by a well-known poet. Instead, I wrote about one memory of Grant.

The Map (firstish draft!)

by Laura Shovan

She emptied her son’s backpack every day

after the bus put up its wheelchair lift and drove away,

after she rolled him up the ramp and through the door.

Once there was a map in his backpack, mirror image

of the pale blue T-shirt she dressed him in that morning,

ironed and clean, now streaked with God-knew what.

The map of his shirt said a black smudge was finger paint

(it was nearing Halloween, his aide wrote,

they were doing spiders), green was grass from recess,

the glowing orange splotch – not a pumpkin –

Miranda “borrowed” a highlighter from the teacher’s pen jar,

drew a lopsided heart on his shoulder. The brown was chocolate

(they told Robbie not to share his MnMs, but…)

When her son died, she thought about the map.

If he had worn a map on the last day, what would she know?

The spider and the grass, the misshapen heart,

chocolate melting on a quiet tongue.

Today's Poetry Friday host is Karissa at the Iris Chronicles. 

NPM 50 State Tour: Virginia

Virginia is for lovers...poetry lovers.

The tenth state, which signed on 6/25/1788, has a Pulitzer Prize winning poet laureate to brag about.

Claudia Emerson won the 2006 Pulitzer for her poetry collection The Late Wife.

Her most recent book, Figure Studies, is on my to-read list. Emerson's website says it opens "with a twenty-five-poem lyric sequence called 'All Girls School,' offering intricate views of a richly imagined boarding school for girls."

I love how Emerson's poem "Stable" is a kind of elegy for her state's rural roots.

Stable

by Claudia Emerson

One rusty horseshoe hangs on a nail

above the door, still losing its luck,

and a work-collar swings, an empty

old noose. The silence waits, wild to be

broken by hoofbeat and heavy

harness slap, will founder but remain;

while, outside, above the stable,

eight, nine, now ten buzzards swing low

in lazy loops

You can find the rest of the poem at the Poetry Foundation.

Virginia may be for lovers, but I love New York. The Empire State is up next on our National Poetry Month 50 State Tour.

Just don't tell them that the Statue of Liberty really does belong to Jersey.

Poetry Friday

My father-in-law passed away this week at the age of 65. He spent two weeks at St. Mary's Hospital in Passaic, NJ, where William Carlos Williams was a longtime staff doctor.

Here is his poem, "The Last Words of My English Grandmother." I love this elegy because Williams doesn't try to pretty up his grandmother or her struggle to stay in control, even as she faces death.

The Last Words of My English Grandmother

There were some dirty plates

and a glass of milk

beside her on a small table

near the rank, disheveled bed—

Wrinkled and nearly blind

she lay and snored

rousing with anger in her tones

to cry for food,

Gimme something to eat—

They're starving me—

I'm all right I won't go

to the hospital. No, no, no

Give me something to eat

Let me take you

to the hospital, I said

and after you are well

you can do as you please.

She smiled, Yes

you do what you please first

then I can do what I please—

Read the rest at Writers Almanac.

This is the plaque to Williams at St. Mary's Hospital. My husband pointed out that -- even at the hospital -- they put "poet" before "physician."

More Poetry Friday at this week's host...Read, Write, Believe.

Robert Albert Shovan December 2, 1943 - June 2, 2009.