The Progressive Poem 2014 Is Here!

I'm taking a break from the Source Poem series today to participate in another National Poetry Month tradition: Irene Latham's annual progressive poem.

The Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem lands at a different blog each day in April. As the poem travels around the blogosphere, each poet adds a line. With thirty minds cooking up a rhyming recipe, you know there are going to be some surprising flavors in this poem.

I decided to give the poem a little "Bam!" a la chef Emeril Lagasse.

Sitting on a rock, airing out my feelings to the universe
Acting like a peacock, only making matters that much worse;

"Acting like a peacock,"
from National Geographic

Should I trumpet like an elephant emoting to the moon,
Or just ignore the warnings written in the rune?
Those stars can’t seal my future; it’s not inscribed in stone.
The possibilities are endless! Who could have known?
Gathering courage, spiral like an eagle after prey
Then gird my wings for whirlwind gales in realms far, far away.

"Spiral like an eagle,"
from All About Birds

But, hold it! Let’s get practical! What’s needed before I go?
Time to be tactical— I’ll ask my friends what I should stow.
And in one breath, a honeyed word whispered low— dreams —
Whose voice? I turned to see. I was shocked. Irene’s
“Each voyage starts with tattered maps; your dreams dance on this page.
Determine these dreams—then breathe them! Engage your inner sage.”
The merry hen said, “Take my sapphire eggs to charm your host.”
I tuck them close – still warm – then take my first step toward the coast
This journey will not make me rich, and yet I long to be
like luminescent jellyfish, awash in mystery.

"I long to be like luminescent jellyfish,"
from Wikipedia

I turn and whisper, “Won’t you come?” to all the beasts and birds,
and listen while they scamper, their answers winging words:
“Take these steps alone to start; each journey is an art

You are  your own best company. Now it's time to depart!"

The Fairies in Spring
Arthur Rackham (public domain)

Next up is Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at the Poem Farm. Perhaps the speaker of our poem will at last take flight with Amy at the controls.
You can find past and future entries in the 2014 Progressive Poem here:

1 Charles at Poetry Time
2 Joy at Joy Acey
3 Donna at Mainely Write
4 Anastasia at Poet! Poet!
5 Carrie at Story Patch
6 Sheila at Sheila Renfro
7 Pat at Writer on a Horse
8 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme
9 Diane at Random Noodling
10 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference
11 Linda at Write Time
12 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading
13 Janet at Live Your Poem
14 Deborah at Show–Not Tell
15 Tamera at The Writer’s Whimsy
16 Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge
17 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
18 Irene at Live Your Poem
19 Julie at The Drift Record
20 Buffy at Buffy Silverman
21 Renee at No Water River
22 Laura at Author Amok
23 Amy at The Poem Farm
24 Linda at TeacherDance
25 Michelle at Today’s Little Ditty
26 Lisa at Lisa Schroeder Books
27 Kate at Live Your Poem
28 Caroline at Caroline Starr Rose
29 Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a Godforsaken Town
30 Tara at A Teaching Life

Tomorrow, Author Amok returns to a month-long series on Source Poems. Baltimore-based poet Shirley Brewer is sharing a favorite poem by Eavan Boland.

Source Poems: "Mother to Son"

For National Poetry Month 2014, I have invited 17 authors and poets to guest post about source poems. In this series of essays, each writer will describe a single poem's significance in his or her life.

Our guest blogger for today's source poem is poet and children's author Jacqueline Jules.

Jacqueline Jules

MOTHER TO SON

by LangstonHughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted with the permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. Source: The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Books, 1994)

Located at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177021

My Ethical Will: “Mother to Son”

by Jacqueline Jules

“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes comes as close to an ethical will as I could ever write to my own sons and grandchildren. Life may sparkle brilliantly at times, but it is not a crystal staircase. Instead of shining steps transparently waiting to lead us to our dreams, we must face tacks, splinters, and “boards torn up.”

My work as an author and a poet has been fraught with as much rejection as success. This year I had two picture books published. NeverSay a Mean Word Again took 16 years from idea to publication. What a Way to Start a New Year required 24 years. In June, Stronger Than Cleopatra, a poetry chapbook I’ve been working on for 20 years, will finally be made available to readers through ELJ Publications. I am intimately familiar with “reachin’ landin’s,” “turnin’ corners,” and “a-climbin’ on.” Rejection is a part of a writer’s life and choosing to sit down every time it happens means being stuck on a rotting staircase with your head in your hands.

This is not to say I haven’t been tripped by other things. Grief has certainly tempted me to sit down on too many occasions. I lost my first husband when I was 37 years old. My parents died nine months apart. Less than two years ago, I watched my only sister painfully succumb to a debilitating genetic disease at the same time another family member was diagnosed with cancer. Sometimes I question my ability to handle what may lie ahead. The height of the staircase is daunting. It offers no view of how many steps must be climbed before the next landing. And if I feel weak and lean too hard on the rail, it sways.

Perseverance, as portrayed so eloquently in “Mother to Son,” has redeeming power. To keep “a-climbing on” and “turnin’ corners,” even when it means “goin’ in the dark” is to recognize that better alternatives do not exist. The narrator in this poem provides both a courageous model and a challenge. If she keeps climbing when her life hasn’t been “a crystal stair,” then her son can face disappointments, too. A parent with a stubborn streak is a powerful inspiration. The voice in my head that keeps me moving when I’d rather collapse often sounds exactly like my father’s.  

The staircase beckons, even when there are “places with no carpet on the floor.” Our job in life is to keep climbing. To accept that life is supposed to be meaningful, not easy. 

And when I reach my final landing, I hope it will be said that I always had the courage to follow the sage advice Langston Hughes offers in “Mother to Son.”

Jacqueline Jules is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Field Trip to the Museum, coming in March from Finishing Line Press, and Stronger Than Cleopatra, coming in June from ELJ publications. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Inkwell, Soundings Review, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, Minimus, Imitation Fruit, Calyx, Connecticut River Review, and Pirene's Fountain. She is also the author of two dozen books for young readers including the Zapato Power series, No English, Sarah Laughs, and Never Say a Mean Word Again. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

Thank you for sharing your personal connection to this poem, Jacqueline. The stories that we have been telling in connection with source poems have made this a powerful National Poetry Month series.

Here is a word animation with a dramatic reading of Jacqueline's source poem, "Mother to Son":

Previous posts in this series:

Laura Shovan on "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams

Dylan Bargteil on "On Moral Leadership as a Political Dilemma" by June Jordan

J. C. Elkin on "Hannibal Clim" (author unknown)

Diane Mayr on a haiku by Basho

Jone MacCulloch on "We Are Waiting (a pantoum)" by Joyce Sidman

Mary Bargteil on Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Poetry Friday: Finding Inspiration with Toby Speed

It's Poetry Friday. Our rakish host is the Rogue Anthropologist, Kara Newhouse. Stop by Kara's blog for all of today's poetry links.

I am announcing my National Poetry Month series today. Find information on that project and how to sign up at the end of this post.

Have you been feeling a little bland in your boots since our Pantone Poetry Project ended? Lacking color and inspiration in your verse, perhaps?

From Bored Central

Today, poet and author Toby Speed -- who has been away from Poetry Friday for a while -- is visiting. When you have a daily writing project such as writing in response to colors, it can be hard to transition into another, or a looser writing practice, or no practice at all. It might feel like the safety net of a great routine has flown away in the wind.

I asked Toby to help us transition out of the structure of our colorful writing project by talking about how and where she finds inspiration for writing.

Welcome, Toby!

A Mash-up of Impressions: How I Write

by Toby Speed

Like most writers, my favorite eureka moment is when I get a great idea for a poem, a story, or a book. Seemingly out of the blue, an idea gels and presses for expression, and I can’t wait to get back to my computer to write it down.

But when I try to come up with an idea by sheer will it scampers away, clean out of sight, its tail disappearing under a rock before I can grab it. What’s left is the dust of an idea without the energy and resonance necessary to take it from start to explosive finish.

What confluence of events, stars, serendipity, and pixie dust does it take to coax forth a great idea and hold onto it? I can’t speak for other writers, but over the years I’ve developed a way to make it happen for me.

Instead of looking for ideas, I focus on impressions: An overheard bit of conversation. A sign on a truck going by. A cardinal outside my window. A discarded list in a shopping cart. Three words as I zoom past a radio station. The smell of baked apples. The song that captures me as I drive down a twisting road. I create a storehouse that’s a mash-up of sights and smells, bits of other texts, random phrases, and memories. Long before I know what I’m going to write – poem, novel, whatever – I’m gathering impressions that will combine to form ideas.

Gathering smells at the
Greenbelt Farmers Market in Maryland.

Many of them will find homes someday; I don’t worry about where to put them now. The confluence I seek is really nothing more than a bunch of impressions that will come together in just the right way and at just the right time to catalyze the writing process.

My children’s book, Brave Potatoes, grew out of the title, which appeared while I was pairing words in long columns on a yellow pad. Those two words combined with other impressions: a dream about flying, some memorable lines from Romeo and Juliet, and the sight of the prize potatoes at a county fair during a summer at the lake with my children.

The nursery rhyme, “Hey, Diddle, Diddle,” played a role in another picture book, Two Cool Cows.

I reworked bits of text from the old rhyme for a story that also incorporated other captured impressions. An erasure poem I wrote recently called, “The Mountains Forget and Remember,” used text from The Wind in the Willows and some visual fragments from the Lord of the Rings movies.

Besides writing down random impressions as they happen, I feed the well to make sure they keep happening. For example, a few weeks ago I downloaded all of Andrew Lang’s fairy books (originally published between the late 1800s and early 1900s) onto my Kindle. I had read them as a child and am eager to see how they resonate 50 years later.

I use the same storehouse of impressions for all my writing. For me, there is no great difference between writing for children and adults, or writing prose and poetry. The finished products are different, but the process is the same: I gather impressions, let them collide with each other, and one day while I’m vacuuming the living room a few of them combine to form an idea. Eureka!

This is a great creative method that works best with long gestation periods. It takes a little faith, a little courage, and repeatedly casting the net to see results. Perhaps a good idea really is a confluence of events, stars, serendipity, and pixie dust, after all.

Toby's adorable book on Goodreads.

Toby Speed writes mysteries, children’s books, short fiction and poetry. DEATH OVER EASY (Five Star), the first book in her mystery series featuring aviator sleuth Emma Trace, came out in October. Her short story, “At the Corner of Night and Nowhere,” is included in the recent anthology, MOON SHOT: MURDER AND MAYHEM ON THE EDGE OF SPACE (Untreed Reads). Toby is the author of seven children's books, including TWO COOL COWS, an American Bookseller Pick of the List and an IRA-CBC Children's Choice Book, and BRAVE POTATOES, which was on both the Publishers Weekly and The New York Times children's bestseller lists. Her most recent poems appear in The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, Light, and Silver Birch Press. Visit tobyspeed.com to learn more.

Toby and I spent a little bit of time this morning, searching the Internet for some poems that fit her mash-up sensibility.

Some suggested reading:
A blog post on "impressions poems" at Goodreads. (Look for "Memories" by John Lavan halfway down the page.

Roethke's "The Waking"

"The Unwritten" by W.S. Merwin (Posted at Kurious Kitty and presented in the video below)



Both Toby and I loved this poem stitched of found lines, "Life Story" by Jeanne Shannon.

Life Story
by Jeanne Shannon
(published at The Found Poetry Review)

I started out in the Virginia mountains.
Cardinals flickered against the snow like feathered garnets.

In the kitchen we strung beans.

I was a Catholic school girl.
I was hinged between worlds.

In summer dusk I recited my future.

There were years of white gloves, straight-seamed hose.

I wanted to be a nun.
I said to the world Don’t try to tempt me with your ripe persimmons.

It was necessary to have more hope than fear.

I see us
in the garden, in light rain,
a young couple planting a row of peas.

Read the rest of the poem at The Found Poetry Review.

I love how Shannon gathers lines from other poets (and favorite poems?) and creates something new.

We all have favorite poems. But I've been thinking about something a little deeper: Source poems. Poems that I draw like water from a well, again and again, to quench some thirst.

For National Poetry Month 2014, I invite you to think about and write about your own source poems. A source poem could be:

1. The poem that made you realize you wanted to be a writer.
2. A poem that shifted your thinking about what poetry is.
3. A poem that changed how you view yourself and your place in the world.
4. A poem that you have memorized and internalized. It's cadence is a part of you.

A source poem is also:

1. A poem that you read again and again and again.
2. A poem that you love to discuss and share with others.
3. A poem that carries special meaning in your life as a writer or as a human being.
4. A poem that has a back-story for you.

This April, I invite readers to submit an essay/guest post about one source poem. Your post might cover all, or just some of the above points. We'll include the poem (or a portion of it). If you have or would like to write a response poem to your source poem, go for it!

This April, I plan to blog just three days a week. If you'd like to sign up for my National Poetry Month: Source Poems series, please send me an email at laura@laurashovan.com. Be sure to select a first and second choice date from this list:

Wednesday, April 2
Friday, April 4
Monday, April 7
Wednesday, April 9
Friday, April 11
Monday, April 14
Wednesday, April 16
Friday, April 18
Monday, April 21
Wednesday, April 23
Friday, April 25
Monday, April 28

Here is an amazing, drool-worthy reading of the source poem I will be writing about, William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just to Say."



In April -- it is the cruelest month -- I promise to tell you how I almost got into a brawl over this poem when I was a freshman at NYU.