Welcome to Poetry Friday. If you don’t know what Poetry Friday is, learn more about it here at Renee LaTulippe’s fabulous poetry website, No Water River.
This week our host is the talented Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche. Please check in there to find out what she has in store for poets this week.
Let me say up front that I have been overwhelmed for a while by the feelings engendered by the phrase “While Nero fiddled, Rome burned.”
It just seems that as there is so much our country should be doing now to solve real problems, yet leaders fight and waste time and money.
However:
Yesterday I found some fun topics to think about. On Wednesday evening on the PBS show, “Animals with Cameras,” tiny cameras that weigh 5% of a meerkat’s body weight, were placed around the necks of meerkats. These clever engineers scurried off to reveal their burrows four feet underground, like a dense subway system.
The cameras revealed a birthing room with five infant meerkats, eyes still closed, actively rooting around for mother’s milk. (I don’t have a picture but you can watch the show.) Apparently this had never been seen before, the babies’ level of activity was a surprise to the researchers. These creatures made me smile. Thank you PBS.
I also leaned on NOVA why planets and moons are spheres–Gravity of course. It inspired this.
PLANETARY QUESTION All planets and moons must become spheres. Gravity softens all angles. Does roundness help planets hurl faster through space and why orbits never get tangled? © Janice Scully 2020 (draft)
Fortunately this week I’ve felt some progress as I try to write a novel in verse inspired by my brother’s Vietnam letters. I hope to have a first draft done, the story down soon, in time to share some of them in a workshop I’m taking with Georgia Heard next month.
Don’t forget to check out what Margaret Simon is up to this Friday at Reflection on the Teche.
Janice, I ADORE Animals with Cameras – my husband and I are captivated by it! Those meerkats! Endlessly fascinating and so precious. Your poem … the ghostly images of orbits formed in my mind; I marvel at the planets’ perfect choreography, so that the trails are never entangled. Hauntingly beautiful to contemplate. And I am right there with you in frustration (and exhaustion) with leaders arguing and wasting money instead of working together to solve problems…
-Fran Haley, https://litbitsandpieces.com/
What a delight! Meerkats, sharing their world with us. I love reading ‘Meerkat Mail’ to middle schoolers. They absolutely still love to be read to. And, Meerkat Mail has funny and touching moments. Your poem about the planets is the kind of writing I really love to do. I love to take a science idea and make it artful. Gravity does round the angles in all kinds of ways. Love it! Enjoy the workshop. We really need books about Vietnam that kids can connect to.
I love how you blended science and questions and wonder into your poem!
What a wonderful distraction and poem of wondering!
Janice, this is lovely. The natural world and science always serve as wonderful distractions and focal points for me. Sometimes, in accepting how small my sphere of influence is, I have to fiddle like Nero and just enjoy our amazing universe!
I love the line “gravity softens all angles.” Can’t wait to hear more about your verse novel, Janice. Have you ever read Jen Bryant’s Kaleidoscope Eyes? It’s set during the Vietnam War.
Thank you, Laura, I would love to read that book!
Thank you for telling us about the meerkats — that sounds like something my family would watch (we’ve been watching Monty Don shows but will run out next week…if you haven’t watched Big Dreams, Small Spaces, you might like it). Good luck finishing your draft!
Janice, your opening quote is all too apt and distressing. I’m glad you’ve found some distraction in the natural world with those adorable meerkats and NOVA. I love this line in your poem: “gravity softens all angles.” Happy writing!
Thanks, Janice, for the underworld look at meekrats. The video was fascinating and your exploration of science turned into a wonderful adventure in poetry writing.
I caught a piece of the PBS show “Animals with Cameras” didn’t get to see the meerkats though–what I saw was fascinating. Gem of a poem, perhaps some stardust brushed your way… thanks!