CW Poetry Class: Tabloid Poem

This poem was written using a tabloid headline from my teacher and four random words that came along with it.

Woman with Four Legs Opens Dance Studio

Alright ladies and gents! Tap those toes!

I know you only ‘ave ‘alf as much as me, but do try!

Agatha stop moving your shoulder like that!

Its all in the ankles. Don’t give me that withering look

Bart. You still have plenty ‘o forward cramprolls to do

before you feet fall off! Trust me I tried.

That’s it! And 1-and-2-and-3-and-4 . . . !

You know I wasn’t always this talented. Didn’t walk proper

‘til I was four. Imagine that! A three year old girl crawling

‘round like I don’t know ‘ow to be a lady! Well, I’m an ‘ard

worker, I am and I worked ‘arder than a gypsy

fortune teller with ’er last dollar. Boy my mama got misty

eyes when I got it right! Front left and back right then

right front and left back! Gotta do it like that otherwise a leg gives

out. Once I got that rhythm it was a matter of months

‘fore I was at the top o’ my dance class! Now, let me get

back to my students. That poor old two-footed man would

stay off ‘is feet all day if ‘e didn’t have to come to my class.

CW Poetry Class: Week 4 Poem

My mom had to raise me and my sisters nearly alone, and she is a great inspiration to me. Her favorite poem is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost so I borrowed a few lines from it. This specific form of poem is called a pantoum in which the lines 2 and 4 from the first stanza become lines 1 and 3 in the next and on goes.

Mama’s Poem

She bore great burdens as child and mother,

and ended up both mother and father.

She braved the world, her and three girls.

Where did she get her strength from?

She was both our mother and father

and raised us on her own.

Where did she get the strength

and courage to take the road less travelled by?

She raised us on her own

and got her bachelor’s degree.

She showed us the road less travelled by,

and how to make a difference

CW Poetry Class: Week 3 Poem 2

This poem glorifies my maternal grandparents as I see their story in my head. The title means “glory to love” in German which I chose to highlight my grandfather’s heritage. It was supposed to be a Shakspearean sonnet, but I stink at iambic pentameter, so there it is.

Erhe sei Leibe

Many years ago a young air navigator went on a date

with a farm girl from Texas. I wonder if then they knew

that one day they’d marry and have a family so great

with three granddaughters that love them a slew.

Together they raised three girls and taught them that education

hard work, and experience in life paid off big time.

As long as they did well and practiced their chosen vocation

they would be happy and healthy and live just fine.

One daughter had three girls herself and raised them the same,

and those girls grew up through life’s highs and lows

knowing that if they messed up it was all part of the game.

The girls all looked for familiar qualities in their beaus:

The knowledge, determination and affection that goes the distance
worthy of comparison to 57 years of devoted and caring existence.

CW Poetry Class: Week 3 Poem 1

I have rather a love/hate relationship with my job. The coworkers are great, but the policies in place and the people that come through leave something to be desired. This abecedarian sonnet helps me deal.

Retail Therapy

Retail is the bane of my existence. I’m done with sales.

Teaching’s my calling, not this monetary jujitsu.

Vampiric patrons enter the store and I clench my jaw.

Xpertly falsified perkiness rings in my welcome to the foray

zombified by the brightly colored displays. I need some java.

Be that as it may, I will perform my civic

duty, and ferry stranger’s money away with a smile.

For this ceremony of materialism is a paying gig.

“Have you heard about our rewards card? May I

justify my reason for offering you a way into debt?” My back

longs for relief from my boss’s pressure. You think I’m

not serious? You try this for four years. Te lo ruego.
Please get me outta here. I’m done with this cirq(ue).

CW Poetry Class: First Poem

So for the first week of class, we read "The Backyard Mermaid" by Matthea Harvey and I wrote this for my first assignment. I loved the concept of the mermaid being desperate to be in a wetter world. It reminded me of my sister’s indoor cat that tries to run outside every time we open a door.

Indoor Outside Cat

There are only small chances to escape.

Her harness, though restricting,

is the key to the patio door,

but her mother will be gone until Thursday.

The door by her food is opened regularly,

but only leads to spiders’ homes, metal devices,

and a roaring machine her keeper uses to go outside.

Why does the keeper use that machine?

Outside is not scary like that machine, but

quiet and wondrous like the equally baffling shower

whose mouth spouts nothing but hot water and

does nothing but make her mother smell different.

She must get out in to the open,

into the sunlight unpolluted by windows.

She can almost feel the wind in her whiskers and taste

the pine needles and cold grass.

Maybe if she sings her feelings her keeper will understand.

The keeper likes to nuzzle her mate at the front door

when he leaves in the morning.

Longing for a sniff of something earthier

than the dust in the litter box, she advances

undeterred, even purring. She will map out

every inch of that grassy space. An indoor cat

at home in her outside place.

CW Poetry Class: Week 2 Assignment

I am taking a creative writing class this semester and so far have worked on two poems. This is the project I have been working on this week. It is an exercise created by Jim Simmerman that has really challenged the way I think about the subject I chose for this poem. Hopefully you'll find it interesting too.

Twenty Little Poetry Projects

1.  Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2.  Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3.  Use at least one image for each of the five senses.
4.  Use one example of synaesthesia (mixing the senses)
5.  Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6.  Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7.  Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8.  Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9.  Use an example of false cause/effect logic.
10. Use a piece of “talk” you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect         and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction; “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)…”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in real life.
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense so that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).

20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes’ an image from earlier in the poem. 

Poetry Experimenting

Working Title (Suggestions?)

Twenty four                 hours ago

Hype was high and        the line was low.

Where the promise of freedom from labor

Meant solitude and amity within the same setting

The heat of new and embers of old combined

With the promise of protein and love

One house, four meats,

Four couples, one me. 

Flash to present

Four meats

One me

.

Poetry Experimenting

Senioritis Setting In

I feel like I've been doing homework all day.

Close readings, skimming and critical summaries.

Analyzing text and digging for an author's stylistic choices

Finding the figurative language that my teachers want me to.

Spitting back what they've already soaked me in.

How much longer til I get a break?

Just kidding. When I'm not at school, I have to work.

When will I remember I'm twenty-one now?

Breaks are for children

Or maybe adults who have raised theirs already.

Poetry Experimenting

Take Me Away 

Take me to the beach

Where life flows easy and free

Where pain and sorrow long since forgotten

And work is a memory of the past

Take me to a park

Bring a picnic lunch and a blanket

Lay me under the sun and tell me a story, sing to me

Let me forget about life and begin to live

Take me to my happy place

Smile and let me enjoy it with you

Take me to my future

And stay there with me always