Poetry Friday: Finicky Feline

Remember the great Poetry Postcard project of early 2013? Remember how I said, "Stop at the planned 44 poems? Heck no! I'm having too much fun."

That was until I met Postcard #49. It is a paper collage from a fine art postcard series, 30 Contemporary Women Artists. And it had me stumped for months.

Detail from Postcard 49.
See full information at the bottom of this post.

My first attempt was to describe the image. Although visual imagery is my habitual "way in" to a poem, I struggled. Describing this image was not easy. The postcard features two Keith Haring-style water nymphs (nude), carrying a spotted leopard (hammock-style) through a lily pond. And the provocative title, Post Coital -- I didn't need to see that.

I let that sit for several months while I was teaching. When I went back to the poem, there was one salvageable line: "They have spent all day eating white paper petals."

The petals and shadows of the water lily are a fitting
subject for the depth and layers of  collage art.
http://www.all-creatures.org/works/waterlily.html

Round two. Persona poem. I like persona poems! I teach persona poems (see some student examples here). Maybe that will work.

I tried the poem in the voice of one of the water nymphs. This draft was called "Cut Out Woman." See, I can write provocative titles, too. But the poem? Bleh.

That's when I threw the early drafts out, gave up trying to create a meaningful poem, and took my own advice. Remember this "points of entry" exercise?

With your postcard (or other prompt: object, idea, memory), jot down:

1. Visual image
2. A word or phrase that jumps out at you
3. An image using one of your other four senses (not visual)
4. Is there something to research?
5. A personal connection

One of these will lead you down the path to the poem.

Is your path to the poem free of obstacles.
Mine certainly wasn't! Look out for those pesky water nymphs.

Did it work for Postcard 49? You bet! I researched the etymology of the word "leopard" and  was rewarded with this juicy piece of information: it contains roots for both lion and panther. In ancient times, the leopard was considered to be a hybrid cat. What did the leopard think about that?

The Leopard

Leo is my lion stride.

I’m velvet paws and kingly-eyed.

Pard is panther’s sinewed gait.

I climb up trees. I watch and wait.

A hybrid beast, the ancients said,

as if I had an eagle’s head

and mere spots on my dappled coat,

where sun and shadows swim and float,

as if my grace could be defined

or catalogued by human mind.

Patience is a hunter’s work,

and silent is the leopard’s lurk.

by Laura Shovan

Postcard Information:

30 Contemporary Women Artists

Beverly Bigwood (American, b. 1952)

Post Coital, 1988. Paper collage, 27 x 45 in.

© 1988 Beverly Bigwood

Pomegranate ● Box 808022 ● Petaluma, CA 94975

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Namibie_Etosha_Leopard_01edit.jpg

Beverly Bigwood's site is worth checking out. There's a cool collage portrait at this link: http://www.bigwoodart.com/gallery/commissioned-portraits/3936981

Have a wonderful Poetry Friday and happy Summer Solstice to all this evening! Today's host is Carol at Carol's Corner.

Poetry Friday: In Praise of Math Poetry

Are you following college hoops? Me either. My heart belongs to football (Ravens!) and my body belongs to yoga.

Give me a wall, I'll stand upside down
and perpendicular for you any time.
www.wholeliving.com

My mind? I am exercising it by participating in March Madness Poetry, cunningly organized by the brilliant and technically prolific Ed DeCaria at Think, Kid Think.

What is March Madness Poetry? Ed explains the competition here.

I was nervous and excited to be selected as a March Madness Authlete. Then, the words were announced. I pulled the sixth seed word "perpendicular."

It's been nearly a year since my last
athletic escapade.

Thus began a mad race to find rhymes for my word: curricular, particular, extracurricular.

And near-rhymes: triangular, rectanuglar, octangular, crecpuscular, caterpillar. Caterpillar? An idea was hatching. But first, attempt #1 -- 9 PM. (Admission, I have revised this poem since.)

Posture Perfect

When Mom wants us to stand up straight

she stacks our heads with dish and plate

and makes us march us around the room

from suppertime to rise of moon.

“But I have homework!” I complain.

“Quadratic angles to explain.”

Standing perpendicular

is entirely extracurricular.

Laura Shovan

But I couldn't get the caterpillar out of my mind. Among my list of possible words for the poem are two notes: "inchworm: perpendicular caterpillar" and "inchworm in math class."  I must have been inspired by all those words ending in angular.

"Okay, inchworm," I thought. "Let's give you a try." Here is poem #2, written at about 9:30 PM.

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/clip/inchworm.html

Worm-ometry

Angles and hexagons curdle my brain when I sit in math class,

but do I complain? Not when my tutor decides to stop by

with legs at both ends and a poppy-seed eye.

He measures rectangular sides with green ease,

inching along each new problem he sees.

His middle points up, perpendicular line.

Since my tutor’s an inchworm, my grades are just fine.

Which my daughter quickly labeled "confusing." 

She wrote her own math poem. (Maybe next year, Ed will have a junior authlete division. Julia is already in training.)

90 Degrees

Perpendicular means ninety degrees.
No more, no less, if you're eager to please.
Use a straight edge and proceed with care
if you wish to make a perfectional square.
A protractor measures exactly precise
from point A to point B the degree -- it's quite nice.
Be careful to place the dot in the right place,
or your square could turn out to be a disgrace.

by Julia Shovan

I went to bed impressed with her work, a little defeated about mine, but hopeful.

And I dreamed of perpendicular. Not perpendicular things like chair backs and hand stands. No. I had dreams about the actual, mathematical word in all its clumsiness. Oy.

The next morning, I decided to revise "Worm-ometry." In the new poem, a kid tells us about his  math teacher, who is an inchworm.

(You can read the final poem, as entered in the March Madness Poetry tournament. Be sure to vote for your favorite!)

Just in case I was on the wrong track, I got out my trusty tin of postcards and wrote a FOURTH poem. I know. I am insane.

K51  This beautiful poem was written by Joseph B. Strauss,

engineer, artist, musician, poet and builder of the Golden Gate Bridge.

PUBLISHED BY “ZAN” STARKS, MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA●

LITHOGRAVURE BY H. S. CROCKER CO., INC.,

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.

Mother to Son

I will take you

            to the Redwoods

                        before you’re grown and gone.

We’ll stand beneath

            their canopy, the trunks

                        ancient and strong.

How straight they reach

            from earth to sky,

                        in perpendicular groves.

My love is like

            the Redwoods, and

once planted, never moves.

Poetry Postcard #50 (View the postcard project wrap-up here.)

My daughter came home from school. She liked both new poems. I consulted with several sources. Their advice: go with math humor over heartfelt.

I thought I was ready to submit until  my husband got involved. He is a math brain, an engineer by training, and he hated the title. "Worm-Ometry" did not make sense to him. Our mathy son concurred.

I tore my hair out. Then, I said, "Aha! I will look up the scientific name of the inchworm." Which is GEOMETER.

Yes. My geometry-teaching inchworm would some day grow up to be a Geometer Moth. How is that for serendipity?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometer_moth

Our Poetry Friday host is Jone at Check it Out. The March Madness Poetry entries are so fabulous, I hope you have some time to check out the perspicacious poets at work.

Poetry Postcard Project Wrap Up

I'm still recovering from last week's AWP conference. Thank goodness, other than visiting Boston's Museum of Fine Arts vintage postcard exhibit, I did not have to leave the hotel and conference center. What a blizzard!

Inside at AWP, warm smiles with my friend Danuta.

Outside, nothing warm about Boston last week.

The weather mirrored what was happening inside. The wild crowds swirling through the book fair exhibit halls. Moments of beauty as Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney read their poems. Finding comforting faces, like Jeannine Atkins, in the bustle.

Thanks to all of you who followed the 44 Postcard Project. You can read about the project's genesis here, Poetry Postcard 1. I was inspired to do a "pay it forward" style birthday project by my friend, California artist Sherry Belul.

And now, the wrap up!

First, I'll list the poems and give links to the posts in chronological order. Then, I'll group them by type: light verse, formal poems, poems of place, and so on.

Postcard 1: "Postcard 1908"
Postcard 2: "Speedway"
Postcard 3: "Aedes Vexans"
Postcard 4: "Thick Skinned"
Postcard 5: "Symmetry"


Postcard 6: "Resolution"
Postcard 7: "You Can't Get My Goat"
Postcard 8: "Pastoral with Hedgehog"
Postcard 9: "Victorian Soap Label"
Postcard 10: "Vera Ellen"

Postcard 11: "Nonchalant"
Postcard 12: "Swimming in the Nile, Age 21"
Postcard 13: "Thinking about Georgia"
Postcard 14: "Places on the Moon"
Postcard 15: "Bird Song"
Postcard 16: "January, Julia"

Postcard 17: "Cutting Gladiole on Our Anniversary"
Postcard 18: "Thrush Lane"
Postcard 19: "Belle Isle"
Postcard 20: "Angry Bird"

Postcard 21: "The Weather of Late is Gray"
Postcard 22: "Every Flavor"
Postcard 23: "Ghost Tour, Williamsburg"
Postcard 24: "Debra Paget"
Postcard 25: "Letter to a Pioneer, from Her Sister"

Postcard 26: "Walter Reed, 1944"
Postcard 27: "To Be Or Sarah Bernhardt"
Postcard 28: "1 Cent Stamp Upside Down"
Postcard 29: "The World's Most Unique Restaurant"
Postcard 30: "Cartoon Boy Meets Cartoon Girl"
Postcard 31: "Groundhog"

Postcard 32: "Airbus A320"
Postcard 33: "Headdress 1955"
Postcard 34: "Honeymoon and High Anxiety"
Postcard 35: "Rebellion"
Postcard 36: "The Day You Quit Me"
Postcard 37: "Nathaniel Hawthorne"
Postcard 38: "February 22"
Postcard 39: "Jug Handle"
Postcard 40: "Alligator Wrestling"
Postcard 41: "Greetings from Fort McClellan"
Postcard 42: "Postcard Cherokee, NC"
Postcard 43: "This Side for Correspondence"
Postcard 44: "The Task at Hand"

It's overwhelming to look at the poems listed that way. But -- to think -- I've already climbed that mountain!

Here are the poems grouped by topic:




Celebrities (10, 13, 24, 27, 37, 44)
Ekphrastic Poems (12, 13)
Family and Memory Poems (8, 12, 33, 38, 39)
Feminist Poems (7, 27, 35, 44)
Form Poems (11, 17, 32, 36, 37, 38, 41, 43)
Funny Poems (3, 19, 21, 29, 40, 43, 44)
K-3 Friendly (15, 20, 29)
Light Verse (15, 19, 21, 28)
Mythology (3, 9)
Nature, Bugs and Animals (5, 14, 15, 18, 20, 31, 40)
Occasional Poems (16, 31, 38, 43)
Persona Poems (7, 11, 25, 28, 30, 44)
Poems about History (4, 25, 26, 33, 41)
Poems of Place (2, 6, 8, 14, 18, 23, 25, 26, 34, 39, 40)
Poems about Postcards (1, 16, 28, 32, 42)
Poems in the Style of Other Poets (12, 22, 36)
Political Poems (6, 26, 28, 41, 42)
Relationships (1, 7, 14, 16, 17, 22, 30, 34, 35, 43)

I'm pleased to announce that a few of the poems have been or will be published. "Pastoral with Hedgehog" was accepted for the anthology Two Countries, which focuses on first general Americans and people who immigrated to the U.S. as children.

"Greetings from Fort McClellan" appeared on the current events poetry site New Verse News.

And a postcard poem written post-44 (#45) was accepted to Barely South Review. The title is "Eyes on the Back of My Head."

Where were the postcards sent?  You can read a list at last week's Poetry Friday post, the project finale.

What's next? Participating in March Madness Poetry at Think Kid, Think! You can check out my first round poem (remember to vote) here. My assigned word was that very stand-up bon mot, "perpendicular."

Poetry Friday: Postcard Project Finale

It’s Poetry Friday. Today, we bid a fond “see you later, alligator” to the 44 Postcard Project. 

From "The Postcard Age: Selections from
the Leonard A. Lauder Collection"

I’m checking in from the AWP Conference in Boston. When I arrived on Wednesday, the first thing I did was hoof it to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to check out an exhibit of vintage postcards.

While I was looking at a postcard from Skegness, England – the beach town where my family used to vacation – a woman in the gallery struck up a conversation.

My grandparents once owned a home in Skegness.
From "The Postcard Age"

She turned out to know the owner of the vintage postcard collection, Leonard K. Lauder (as in Estee). I told her about my poetry postcard project and she had some insights into the exhibit. Fascinating!

How am I feeling, now that I’ve completed all 44 postcard poems? Like this:

The Task at Hand

If I attacked
each daily chore
with Wonder Woman’s

musculature,

jetting, red-heeled

here to there
in blue, starry

underwear,

I would deserve

a gold tiara

and bullet-

stopping cuffs.
I would crush tasks

in my able hands

and wonder

have I done

enough.

Laura Shovan

Postcard Information:

Sensation Comics No. 26

February 1944 │ Artist: Harry G. Peter

© DC Comics

From The Art of Vintage DC Comics: 100 Postcards, published by Chronicle Books. © 2010 DC Comics.

Yesterday, my poetry card was full at the AWP Conference. I attended a session about the Afghan Women Writing Project. Talk about Wonder Women -- they are super poets and super brave. (They are looking for mentors. Find out more here.)

Later in the day, I went to a panel on verse novels, which included Rita Dove. Her Sonata Mulattica has been on my to-read list for several years, since Dove spoke about it on the Diane Rehm Show.

This verse novel by Dove is about violinist
George Bridgetower, a contemporary and
friend of Beethoven.

The Thursday evening keynote was poets Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott.

I’m going to have to wrap up the postcard project when things are a little calmer. Next week, I’ll post a cheat sheet, listing the poems in groups based on their themes, as well as providing links to each of the poems by number.

For now, here’s some data on where the 44 postcard poems traveled:

From "The Postcard Age"

Twelve states: California (3 cards), Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland (28 cards), Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Virginia.

And three countries: China, Italy and Scotland.

Am I ready to quit? Not 100%. I plan to continue writing postcard poems, but will shift to one or two a week for the rest of 2013.

Postcards have worked their hypnotic effect on me.

Today’s Poetry Friday host is my dear pal Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe. Stop by and leave a little greeting, or a link to your poetry post.

Poetry Postcard 42: Tourists

Greetings from Boston! I was supposed to fly from Baltimore this morning to attend the AWP Conference, but with snow on its way, I got out of Dodge early.

www.postcardcollector.org

My friend, novelist Danuta Hinc, and I arrived last night. Whew! That was good thinking. Our original flight has already been cancelled. Hubby is home with the kids today.

With extra time in Boston, I get to be a tourist today. At the top of my must-see list is the vintage postcard exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Tourism has a double edge in my mind. When I was a college student at NYU, we used to avoid midtown Manhattan on the weekends. Why? Tourists! My friends and I were “real” New Yorkers. Tourists were people to avoid.

From Ephemeral New York

I’ve had good and bad experiences as a tourist. I love London, but have witnessed anti-American sentiment there. In Egypt, I witnessed local men sexually harassing a young Asian girl who must have been a tourist. My one visit to Israel was a lifetime highlight, but included an incident when we drove into the wrong neighborhood and someone threw a bottle at our van.

Postcard #42 addresses this aspect of tourism – the tension between “native” and visitor.

Indian Family – Cherokee Indian Reservation, Cherokee, N. C. 257

Photo by W. M. Cline

Postcard: Cherokee, N. C.

The woman’s fringed dress and beaded sash.

The man’s feathered headdress, blue tie.

The child between them holds a tomahawk

made of wood and stone, his fingers loose

on the handle. The man’s hand closes

around his son’s waist, as if the child might bolt

out of frame. The boy looks into the camera−

only he. A photographer from Standard Souvenirs

and Novelties has come to the reservation

to get this shot. The day is bright.

Shadows move on the teepee behind them.

Laura Shovan

Postcard Information

"The Cherokees today number of 3000 on the reservation here. They are descendants of those who hid in the Smokies when the Cherokee removal to Oklahoma began in 1838."

PUBLISHED BY STANDARD SOUVENIRS & NOVELTIES, INC., KNOXVILLE, TENN.

Postcard lovers, here is a website for you. At Collective History, you'll find virtual postcards. Many catalog important historical events. Not all are kid friendly, so preview first. These images would make great prompts for writing.

I am taking tomorrow off for AWP, so there will be no new post. If you’re at the conference, find me at table X13. I’m hoping to attend Ellen Hopkins and Holly Thompson’s panel on YA verse novels. Here is the information:

Event Title: Poetry Serving Story Serving Teens: Verse Novels for Young Adults
Participants: Holly Thompson, Ellen Hopkins, David Levithan, Mariko Nagai, Samantha Schutz
Date: Saturday, March 9
Time: 1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.
Location: Room 110, Hynes Convention Center

This week, I received an ARC of Holly’s new novel, The Language Inside, in the mail. Look for an Author Amok interview with Holly later this month.

Friday is the big Poetry Postcard Project wrap-up post. I promise the final poem will be SUPER (hint, hint).