Poetry Friday: Poetry Postcard 38

Happy birthday, G.W!

It’s a big day. The 44 Postcard Project is almost complete, as I mail out the 44^th vintage postcard with its poem today.

I’ll be blogging poetry postcards for another week or two. It feels too soon to do a major reflection about the project. The short version: Writing a new poem nearly every day was more fun than I expected. Writing in response to antique postcards, with their random images and subjects, has stretched me as a poet and a person.

Today is also my 44^th birthday. Here is the card for today, postcard #38.

Happy birthday to our many Piscean Poetry Friday bloggers!

When I read at the Washington Printmaker’s Gallery in December, I invited audience members to sign up for a postcard. A man in the audience told me that his sister and I share a birthday. Would I send her a poem for 2/22? Sure!

February 22

The school photographer

always called me Martha

before the click. It was a trick

to make kids smile,

mistaking each girl with a name

dowdy as mothballs.

We’d bubble in the hall

over who was Doris, Edith,

Josephine. I confess

I wondered why he chose

for me the name

of George Washington’s wife.

Was it written on my lips:

I shared the president’s birthday?

I took this as a sign. How else

could a stranger know me

the way the crow knew me –

the one that haunted our yard.

I heard it when I hid

in the dry leaves. Laura,

Laura, the crow would caw

if I listened very hard.

Laura Shovan

UPDATE: Maybe I wasn't such a weird kid after all. Our local PBS station has been airing a documentary about crows. Scientists have proven that they can recognize individual human faces.

I’ve been keeping tabs on the poetry postcards’ travels. They have gone out to twelve states and three foreign countries. Maryland, naturally, received the most postcards (28 of the 44).

I’ll post a full list of states and countries, along with a list of all the postcard poems, when I blog about postcard #44.

Who else is born on 2/22? Glad you asked! Some of my favorites are:

poet Edna St. Vincent Millay
(great biography, by the way);

Broadway actress Lea Salonga
(she originated the role of Eponine in Les Miz);

actor Kyle MacLachlan
(my celeb crush since Twin Peaks aired,
he hosted my all-time
favorite episode of Saturday Night Live),

and philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

You'll find a full list of famous 2/22s at this site. Take a minute to search your own birthday. You're sure to find some surprise birthday buddies.

Who's hosting today's Poetry Friday party? It's Sheri Doyle! I can't promise that she'll have cake, but there will be a buffet of poetry posts for you to sample.

Here's a birthday gift from me to you, Lea Salonga singing "On My Own."

Poetry Postcard 31

Remember my abandoned sonnet (Poetry Postcard 22)? Like a gun flashed on page one of a mystery novel, it had to show up again before the end of the 44 Postcard Project.

It was Groundhog Day, February 2. Baltimore poet Rosalind Heid had just sent me the perfect postcard for the occasion.

But occasional poems? Ugh. Aren’t they the job of poets laureate in countries like Great Britain, where they are required to write poems about coronations and royal births?

E. A. Poe says occasional poems give him nightmares.

I had to put my snark and occasional snobbery aside and give the groundhog some thought. How does he feel about Groundhog Day? What does he think of all the fuss? Does he even like his personified name, Phil?

Children's author Pamela Curtis Swallow explores
these questions in GROUNDHOG GETS A SAY.

I began thinking about other animals that the media hypes because of their purported ability to prognosticate things like the weather, sports scores, and political elections.

This time I was able to complete the sonnet. The poem has a rhyme scheme, but it is not Shakespearean, Spenserian, or Italian. It’s not written in strict iambic pentameter, but there are about ten beats per line. You'll find an explanation of the three standard sonnet forms here.

Today, some say, a poem only needs fourteen lines to be considered a sonnet. See the last paragraph of Poets.org's sonnet article for more on the modern sonnet form.

Groundhog

Phil squats on the doormat of his burrow
and people gather, peering at his shadow.
It is a burden, forecasting the weather.

No one understands that problem better

than Paul, who foretold sports scores and elections

from his aquatic tank. His predilection
for mussels painted with the would-be winner’s
flag or face, for Paul, was merely dinner.

Even the names−Phil, Paul, Oscar the cat
who pads a nursing home, feet halting at
the beds of patients just before they die−

are humanized, as if Phil could say why
his shadow followed him outside today
and why these humans will not go away.

Laura Shovan

Call it serendipity, but after I posted this poem on Facebook, I heard from Linda Baie of Teacher Dance. Her son-in-law was editor on a documentary about Paul the Octopus. Here is a trailer for "The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus" from YouTube.

Cat lovers, here is an article about Oscar the cat.

Oscar was also the subject of  a book.

Postcard Info:

"Punxsutawney, Pa. a community of 10,000, where, every February 2 the Groundhog appears and forecasts the weather for the succeeding six weeks. A shadow means six more weeks of winter. No sunshine, and hence no shadow, means spring is just around the corner."

MWM Color-Litho “Bursheen” Finished, Made Only By WM Co., Aurora, Mo. 194,218

On 2/2/13, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring. East-coasters who experienced last week's record blizzard may disagree.

A Poetry Friday Field Trip

My summer project: revising my middle grade book, "We Rule the School: A Fifth Grade Yearbook."

It's a combination of "self-portrait" poems & occasional poems that cover one year in the life of a central-Maryland fifth grade class.

Here is one of the occasional poems, written in the voice of two boys in the class. They're on their way to Mt. Vernon for a field trip.

Send comments! (Pls. ignore references to other characters for now. You'll have to wait for the book!)

Bus-ting Out: Field Trip Poem It’s Thursday but we got no school. We’re on a field trip, hey that’s cool. Where we going? George Washington’s place. Gonna see the fake teeth he wore in his face. Harry’s in the back row drumming a beat. Girls Miss Mary Macking between the seats. Chaperones up front chatting away. Gray Torres snuck his DS and we all wanna play. Miss Hill wearing jeans, first time this year. There’s Nationals Stadium – everybody gotta cheer. Ashlie Hauk singing a song we all know. Jason Chen beat boxes. He got the flow. Uno cards flying when we hit a pot hole. Waving at the White House and the National Mall. Girls text the boys, making a fuss. Best part of a field trip is riding the bus.

(My book, "We Rule the School," owes a lot to Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology. I'm a huge fan.)

Our host for this week's Poetry Friday is Kelly Herold at Crossover. Have a great first weekend of summer.