The Tuesday Platform

While others sleep through the deepening shades of night, I watch as the dark slowly consumes the world like a graphite drawing, if only I could separate sorrow from the grey and fill light into the missing space.

I stumbled upon an incredibly poignant poem by Marilyn Hacker, and was touched by the emotion in her writing. Born in New York City on November 27, 1942 she was the only child of a working-class Jewish couple, each the first in their families to attend college. 

Having attained a B.A. in Romance Languages in 1964, Hacker moved on to work as a book dealer in London from whence her brilliance rewarded her with the first collection of poems, Presentation Piece, was published by the Viking Press in 1974.

Since then, Hacker has published many more collections, including A Stranger’s Mirror: New and Selected Poems 1994-2013 (W. W. Norton, 2015); Names (W. W. Norton, 2010); Desesperanto: Poems 1999-2002 (W. W. Norton, 2003); First Cities: Collected Early Poems 1960-1979 (W. W. Norton, 2003); and Squares and Courtyards (W. W. Norton, 2000).

About Hacker's work Poet Jan Heller Levi states; 

"I think of her magnificent virtuosity in the face of all the strictures to be silent, to name her fears and her desires, and in the process, to name ours. Let’s face it, no one writes about lust and lunch like Marilyn Hacker. No one can jump around in two, sometimes even three, languages and come up with poems that speak for those of us who sometimes barely think we can even communicate in one. And certainly no one has done more, particularly in the last decade of formalism, to demonstrate that form has nothing to do with formula. In villanelles, sestinas, and sonnets—not to mention a variety of forms whose names I can’t even pronounce—Marilyn Hacker can journey us on a single page through feelings as confusing as moral certainty to feelings as potentially empowering as unrequited passion." Read more here

Ghazal: The Dark Times

Marilyn Hacker, 1942

Tell us that line again, the thing about the dark times…
“When the dark times come, we will sing about the dark times.”

They’ll always be wrong about peace when they’re wrong about justice…
Were you wrong, were you right, insisting about the dark times?

The traditional fears, the habitual tropes of exclusion
Like ominous menhirs, close into their ring about the dark times.

Naysayers in sequins or tweeds, libertine or ascetic
Find a sensual frisson in what they’d call bling about the dark times.

Some of the young can project themselves into a Marshall Plan future
Where they laugh and link arms, reminiscing about the dark times.

From every spot-lit glitz tower with armed guards around it
Some huckster pronounces his fiats, self-sacralized king, about the dark times.

In a tent, in a queue, near barbed wire, in a shipping container,
Please remember ya akhy, we too know something about the dark times.

Sindbad’s roc, or Ganymede’s eagle, some bird of rapacious ill omen
From bleak skies descends, and wraps an enveloping wing about the dark times.

You come home from your meeting, your clinic, make coffee and look in the mirror
And ask yourself once more what you did to bring about the dark times.


I also found an exquisite song by Linkin Park which goes beautifully with the poem by Hacker.

Welcome to the Tuesday Platform, the weekly open stage for sharing poems in the Imaginary Garden. Please link up a poem, old or new, and spend some time this week visiting the offerings of our fellow writers.

SHARE * READ * COMMENT * ENJOY

The Tuesday Platform

I AM IN NEED OF MUSIC

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

There is something about poems by Elizabeth Bishop that stir my soul and my muse from time to time. Greetings poets, wayfarers and friends, it's a beautiful day here and I am looking forward to reading poetry with a cup of coffee.

If you have any thoughts to share, ideas you wish to release into the wild or a world view to express, then you have come to the right place. Please share a poem of your choice and enjoy the company of your fellow scribes. We look forward to reading you and hope you have a wonderful day ahead.

SHARE * READ * COMMENT * ENJOY

Bits of Inspiration ~ Poet Discovery

Hello Toads and visitors! I'm excited to introduce you to a poet I discovered over the holidays. Her name is Jessica Helen Lopez. I am currently reading her poetry collection, Always Messing With Them Boys, and she hit me with wow from the first poem. She is sassy, bold, frank and was the former City of Albuquerque Poet Laureate and the Poet-in- Residence for the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History from 2014 to 2016. I could go on and on about her, but for brevity you can learn more about her here.

Today I want to focus on her poem, Mama is a Poet. 

"oh silly mama 

why are you always scratching

words out of your head,

like nighttime pulgas, like old-school

rollers wrapped around the pelos of your bangs,

pink little pieces of crazy?"

(Translations: pulgas - fleas, pelos-hair)

And again I say Wow!  For today's challenge I want you to express why you write poetry. There are so many ways to approach it. What it means to you. How you began. Critics who don't get your journey. Be bold about it. (In case you don't know it. You are already bold. Anyone who places their work on the internet knows it is available for the world to read. Kudos to all of you!)

As always share a new poem inspired by this challenge, drop it into Mr. Linky, and visit your fellow poets to read why they write poetry.

True North - In tandem with Karin and Björn

Hello Toads and Tadpoles,

Happy Wednesday, this is Karin and Björn writing a poem in tandem. We have sent drafts back and forth between us starting from the idea of North. We wanted to share something common between the two of us. and both having connection to Sweden we thought we should use that in the poem and write about what the North means for us. We found that slight differences but also lots in common. Then we are each sharing an image, Karin a wonderful piece of art, and Björn a photo from one of the many rivers of the north.

 

Copyright ManicDdaily aka Karin Gustafson

True North

My true north was summer, a place where time
melted, where grass grasped
ankles as if they were
best friends, as if grass had arms
and ankles waists, as if it weren’t too hot
to hold tight to anything but
what froze.

Like my tongue, when stuck on frigid steel, I went  

from silence into songs;

when thawed,

belonging with the woodwind, with anemones  

in that loss of night

when dusk made love to dawn

my true north was summer

with strawberries and milk.

And when life drove me past
chosen directions,
I would look for that north
in the spooling pools
of the rear view mirror,
finding again the surprise
of strawberries,
knowing then that a return to grass should hold
no terror.

In the sound of water

in the canvas pitter-patter,

in the thunder and the roar of waterfalls

behind the bending boughs of birches

with every bird

are cairns that lead me north.

Thus I find my footing,

knowing well

I have walked this path before.

Copyright Björn Rudberg

Physics with Björn: Brownian Motion

First I thought about doing a new year prompt, but somehow I think all has been said about last year. Still you are fine to combine my prompt with new year wishes.

As you might know I once read Physics, and I took a PhD many years ago. I have not worked with Physics after that, but I have always had a passion to understand how the world works, and how it connects to philosophy.

For me Physics is always present in my writing, but I have understood that for many of you Physics brings back memories of less joyful moments in school. I would like to start a small series on different phenomena and what it might tell us of the world. I promise, that there will be no equations, no math, just fun. If you like the theme I will continue this prompts with more challenges.

Today let us look into a microscope and consider Brownian Motion, which is the random motion of particles suspended in a fluid that can be observed through a microscope.

When this was first described by Robert Brown in 1827 when looking at pollen suspended in a solution. At that time atoms and molecules was just a wild theory and the movements he observed seemed random and unpredictable. It was not until 1905 when Albert Einstein came up with a comprehensive theory that the reason was collision from the invisible molecules in the fluid, and that the movement could be explained (if not predicted). Therefore it constituted one of the first concrete evidences of the building.blocks of matter.

Isn’t it fascinating how we can observe something for real that is caused by something we can only imagine?. Often I find the world to be random and erratic. Are we bounced around by forces we only can imagine.

Think about concepts like apparent randomness, of motion and of what we cannot see. Maybe you can imagine being puppeteered like pollen in a fluid, or just dance to randomness and see where you end up.

Link up below and share the joy what other read.

And have a happy new year.

It is not just about food

Baking the Bread by Anders Zorn

Hi there, I think we are starting to see the end of the tunnel in this month of poetry. Personally I will not make it, I started running too late. But I have a challenge for you that should be fun.

I want you to consider recipes, the ingredients and procedures we use when preparing that perfect dish. Actually I find a recipe quite poetic sometimes. There is such a promise in the list of ingredients and the procedures that give a desired result. A well written recipe is actually easy to remember by heart.

Consider for instance:

Rev. Smith's recipe for salads

(Sydney Smith 1771-1845)

To make this condiment your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boil'd eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen seive,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half-suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add but a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procur'd from town;
Lastly o'er the flavour'd compound toss
A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce.
Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat!
Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.

So today I want you to write a poem in the form of a recipe. It can either be something we can actually using for our favorite dinners, but why not a recipe for something more abstract such as love, spring or death.

Bits Of Inspiration ~ Maya Deren

Happy Wednesday everyone! Today I want to share Maya Deren with you and hope her innovative approach to film art will inspire you.

Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowskaia (Russian:Элеоно́ра Деренко́вская), was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer.

The function of film, Deren believed, like most art forms, was to create an experience; each one of her films would evoke new conclusions, lending her focus to be dynamic and always-evolving. She combined her interests in dance, voodoo and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black and white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures, jump cutting, superimposition, slow-motion and other camera techniques to her fullest advantage, Deren creates continued motion through discontinued space, while abandoning the established notions of physical space and time, with the ability to turn her vision into a stream of consciousness. (Wikipedia)

In reading about Maya I found agreement between different sources that Meshes of the Afternoon is one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema.

She was also a poet. The following are excerpts from two of her poems.

It Must Be Done with Mirrors 

It must be done with mirrors 

my head that rests on nothing in mid-air. 

Untitled 

When rains come down to flood the town 

And earnest citizens really ought’er 

try to make and keep things sort’er 

dry… 

 I make water

 You can find the complete poems here.

So today I hope Maya Deren will inspire you. I have offered a triptych for you to choose from.  Select a photograph, her movie, or her poetry (or all three) and create a new poem. Please add it to Mr. Linky and please visit your fellow poets.

Poems In April ~ Taking It To The Streets

OK Toads we are going to take our poetry to the streets. When I was in San Juan Puerto Rico last year I saw this young lady writing poetry. For a small fee she would write a poem for you on a typewriter she held on her lap. Sadly I didn't get a chance to have her write one for me, but the image of her sitting on that cobblestone street has remained with me. I wondered what I could write on the spur of the moment for a total stranger.

So the challenge is to write a street poem. What would you like to leave on the concrete, the wall, a light post, a picnic table, in a cafe, a grocery store, etc. for someone to find? It could be a bit of wisdom, hope, encouragement, or something to bring a smile. 

Please write an original poem specific to this challenge and post it on the Mr. Linky provided below.

A Toad's Favo(u)rite~ Like the Singing Coming off the Drums: Moving to the rhythm of Sonia Sanchez

I honestly can't remember when I first read Sonia Sanchez. What I remember was that I was immediately drawn to her work. The sounds and rhythms resonated with me. When I read more about her, poet and activist, my attraction deepened. 

Sanchez's work is conversational. Her vocabulary is ordinary, and the lines read in the way you wish you could speak: rolling beautiful yet natural rhythms off your tongue. I don't know what came first, but it is clear that I have an affinity for sound, and the sound of Sanchez's lines feel good on my tongue. There is internal rhythm without rhyme. There is an undercurrent of sensuality and the erotic in her work. Like a good love poem, writing the erotic well requires skill. Sanchez is a good place to start if  you appreciate the sensual.

Novice poets and readers alike have mistakenly believed that Ms. Sanchez's short poems are casual, lacking depth and form. The misconception has often lead to attempts at emulating her style without understanding the craft and effort necessary to write short, distilled poetry. I know I made that mistake.

While her work is accessible, a closer examination reveals the nuances of device and form. She is best known for her take on Asian forms including haiku, tanka and senryu. Devoted readers also know her narrative, longer pieces, the most celebrated, Does Your House Have Lions?, a narrative poem about her brother's battle with AIDS and how his family coped with his death and their loss.

In the late 90s and again in the early 2000s, I met the poet. Each time, she graciously took

the time to talk with me. During our first meeting, she told me why craft matters. She said when students take a course with her, they are required to write twelve poems in twelve different forms. Twelve forms in twelve weeks. In her class, the emphasis is skill. Talent can't be taught. In the classroom, the student learns how to read and write poetry. The expectation isn't great poetry written, rather the aim is to cultivate an informed, learned appreciation for poetry.

On one source I read, the author writes that Ms. Sanchez rejected standard English and established poetry convention, and that's true. That was early in her career when her work and her rejection was aligned her with social-political life. What the article failed to acknowledge is that while Sanchez rejected convention, she did not advocate uneducated arrogance being passed for art or activism.

The poet/activist has enjoyed a long, prolific career. Readers have witnessed a shift in perspective in her body of work. Experiences shape what and how we write. I believe art is organic, a breathing thing that continues to evolve.

I invite you to explore the work of Sonia Sanchez. I've included multiple hyperlinks and a short bibliography. Below is one of her most celebrated works and my first favorite:

Poem #3

I gather up

each sound

you left behind

and stretch them

on our bed.

each nite

I breathe you

and become high.

Bibliography

Homecoming, Broadside Press (Detroit, MI), 1969.
We a BaddDDD People, with foreword by Dudley Randall, Broadside Press (Detroit, MI), 1970.
Ima Talken Bout the Nation of Islam, TruthDel, 1972.
Love Poems, Third Press (New York, NY), 1973.
A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women, Broadside Press (Detroit, MI), 1973.
I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, Black Scholar Press (Sausalito, CA), 1978.
homegirls and handgrenades, Thunder’s Mouth Press (New York, NY), 1984.
Under a Soprano Sky, Africa World (Trenton, NJ), 1987.
Continuous fire: A Collection of Poetry, Inkbook, 1994.
Autumn Blues: New Poems, XX, 1994.
Wounded in the House of a Friend, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1995.
Does Your House Have Lions?, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1997.
Like the Singing Coming off the Drums: Love Poems, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1998.
Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1999.
Homegirls and Handgrenades, White Pine Press, 2007.
Morning Haiku, Beacon Press, 2010.

Links:
Poets.org
Sonia Sanchez
Afropoets.net
Poetry Foundation

Sunday Mini-Challenge: Chained Rhyme, Part Two

Chained, by Lall, Creative Commons, flick'r

Hello, Toads. This is hedgewitch, bringing you the second part of my chained rhyme mini-challenge. Actually, the word rhyme here is a bit of a misnomer, as today we are going to consider the larger subject of chained verse, exploring something called the Cascade.

You'll remember that last time we looked at the purest definition of chained rhyme, where the last syllable of one line rhymed with the first syllable of the next. I mentioned that many traditional poetic forms use a more complex definition, which is also known as interlocking, or chained verse. This is often defined broadly as per wikipedia: Chain[ed] rhyme [or verse] is the linking together of stanzas by carrying a rhyme over from one stanza to the next.

This simply means that you use a rhyme scheme which repeats a rhyme from one stanza in the succeeding stanzas, such as in the terza rima, composed of tercets, with a pattern of a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, etc. and ending in a rhymed couplet to the d line, or the Rubaiyat quatrain, rhyming AABA, which Kerry has given us before as a mini-challenge, and can also be chained where succeeding quatrains pick up the third line as the main rhyme for the next, as in the celebrated Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Wait! Stop! Don’t click that mouse!

Now that I've thoroughly confused you, you'll be glad to know we aren't going to delve into either of those forms today (unless someone feels adventurous, of course--I'd love to read either one.)  No, I was just toying with you. Instead, we're going to chain entire lines, not syllables, not rhyme schemes, in an invented modern form of chained verse called the cascade. If it seems familiar, it may be because Marian Kent gave us an example of a similar type of chaining in her explication (and excellent example) of the Garland Cinquin last weekend.

The cascade is a form I first saw at the now defunct Big Tent Poetry. It's invention is attributed to Udit Bhatia, about whom I could find out nothing online, except that fact.

The rules are simple: write a short poem (or single complete image ) of three to five lines (or more if ambitious, but this is a mini-challenge.)  Choose your lines and subject carefully as you are now going to deconstruct that poem and use each line as the concluding line of a stanza. That is, your first line will end your second stanza, your second line will be the last line of your third stanza, and so forth. Each stanza should have the same number of lines as your original poem. If you wrote a three line original poem, you will end up with a four stanza cascade. This sort of structure will give a slowly building, cascading effect to the piece, hence the name.

To get to the nuts and bolts, here's a simple one I worked up as an example. The first stanza is a very short standalone poem which completes a thought:

Even the hottest fire burns out

but not until it has taken

all that will burn.

The next step is to write a second stanza that builds from that, and uses the first line as the last, then a third ending with the second line, and so on, till you end the last stanza with the last line. 

Here's the completed cascade:

Fire

Even the hottest fire burns out
but not until it has taken
all that will burn.

A foot kicked through ashes
stirs  a feathery-cold cloud;
even the hottest fire burns out.

The flame of the bird on the spit is
long gone. The memory swallows,
but not until it has taken

 crisped wings, charred
bones, the spindle's pierce; not
all that will burn.

© joyannjones

If you'd like to see a few more examples, here's a link to the Shadow Poetry site which gives an explanation as well as an example by the inventor. And here are links to two others I've written, one with a simple rhyme scheme, The Ghoul and the Weavers, and a longer, more complex one where I've altered some of the phrasing in the end lines, Train Time.  

Hint: the longer your first stanza, the longer the poem becomes. It's a very organic process.

So toads, the challenge is to write a poem in the cascade form, where each line of the first stanza is used in sequence as the ending line of succeeding stanzas, line one ending the second, line two the third, etc. Each stanza should have the same number of lines as your first, and your completed poem will thus be one stanza longer than the number of lines in each, i.e., a four line initial stanza will equal a five stanza poem.

While attention should definitely be paid to the rules, don't be intimidated by them.  I encourage everyone once again to play around with this, to have fun and get creative--your response could be as simple and repetitive as a song lyric hook, as short as a chain of haiku-like tercets where lines are reused, or as complex as you want to make it. Rhyme it, or not, use a meter, or just make it free verse all the way, with the first stanza broken up into the lines that end each thought in an unbroken merge. 

For those who are just not into exploring this particular style, by all means feel free to exceed expectations and do a terza rima or Rubaiyat as described earlier.

You may also eschew form completely and write a free verse piece around the theme of Chains. I've included a few of my amateur garden photos again; feel free to reuse them with attribution.

As always, in the spirit of these challenges to encourage and expand our writing, please write a new poem to either the form challenge or free verse option, and post it here with a link back to the Imaginary Garden. Finally, enjoy!