Today’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem. Thank you, Irene, for hosting. Be sure to stop by and see her post dedicated to a poet I admire, Nikki Grimes. I was awed by her novel in verse, Ordinary Hazards, which I wrote about previously, here. So I will refer readers to that. I look forward to today’s celebration of her and her prolific and marvelous work.
This week I stretched my poetry muscles using prompts from Kat Apel’s Poetry Pep Up. I thought I would share my few small pieces. I enjoyed reading the work of others’ last week. If you are not familiar with Poetry Pep Up, you can find excellent instructions for each of Kathryn’s prompts on the link above.
I warmed up with the Zentangle, but decided to keep that to myself.
Writing an EPIGRAM was next. An epigram imparts wisdom, is supposed to be witty with a “twist in the tail”, is written as a couplet, quatrain or one-liner, and it sometimes rhymes.
I love Kat’s example by Oscar Wilde. “I can resist anything but temptation.”
So here is an epigram:
Chicken or eggs-
whichever comes first.
© Janice Scully (draft)
The tetractys was fun. This is a five line syllabic poem of 1, 2, 3, 4 and then 10 syllables.
Words
have moods.
Some of them
choose solitude,
but is seems most gather in sentences.
© Janice Scully (draft)
The next prompt was an ekphrastic poem. Kat had several great photos but I’ll use one I found on my phone of our newest family member, Marshmallow.
All I’ve ever known is people.
They feed me
play with me
and love me
Still, a cat must
be vigilant
so that’s why I’m
viewing askance
the one in the tan pants.
Next: GOLDEN SHOVEL . The first and only golden shovel I wrote was from a prompt by Nikki Grimes from an interview on Michelle Heinrich Barnes’ blog . If you are not familiar, you’ll find description of this form on the link above. Here’s my golden shovel from a poem by Christopher Marlowe:
WHERE IS OUR RELATIONSHIP GOING?
(A Golden Shovel poem inspired by a line from Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan poem, THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE: “Come live with me and be my love”)
So I said, “Come!
Bring your cat! We will all live
together. Yes, with
your little hedgehog, too! Trust me.
your painted turtle and
hamster will feel at home, we’ll be
a family, and you will be my
only love.
© Janice Scully (draft)
Enjoy Poetry Friday and thank you, Irene, for hosting Poetry Friday and celebrating Nikki Grimes!