Hello / Goodbye

A Farewell by Harriet Monroe

GOOD-BY: nay, do not grieve that it is over—   The perfect hour; That the winged joy, sweet honey-loving rover,   Flits from the flower. Grieve not,—it is the law. Love will be flying—         5   Yea, love and all. Glad was the living; blessed be the dying!   Let the leaves fall.

Butterfly on Tiger Lily Enjoying the Food 
by audreyjm529 , via Wikimedia Commons

Two prompts in a row!  

What fun!  

And yet, this is my last for a while as I take time off to work on another important project.  I'll be finishing the April challenge and then I'll be here on Mondays, so this isn't goodbye. Yet my last prompt as a Toad and for Day 24 of our April Challenge is:

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Write a Hello and/or Goodbye poem. 

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A Few (of many) Possibilities:

1. an entire saga from hello to goodbye of a person, event, toy, place, time of life, or etc 
2. a goodbye to one that is a hello to another 
3. a goodbye that is not a goodbye at all
4. a charm to get rid of or to gain something
5. anything you want that includes an idea of hello or of goodbye or both

Whatever your focus, get emotional, and make us readers feel that emotion by showing instead of telling.

Here are two examples for you, but remember to consider Haiku and Lune,  Limerick and other forms as well.

(1) John Updike makes me feel loss in one of my favorite goodbye poems.  Here he also celebrates the importance of hello:  

         " Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children "

(2) Lisa Russ Spaar explores the possibility of saying goodbye to the self in this wonderful poem:      

  

How I Might Sound if I Left Myself Alone

Turning to watch you leave,

I see we must always walk toward

other loves, river of   heaven

between two office buildings.

Orphaned cloud, fish soup poppling,

book spined in the open palm. Unstoppable light.

I think it is all right.

Or do tonight, garden toad

a speaking stone,

young sound in an old heart.

Annul the self? I float it,

a day lily in my wine. Oblivion?

I love our lives,

keeping me from it.

Source: Poetry (February 2013). Used by permission of Lisa Russ Spaar.

I love this!    All the sounds and silences she describes!  And Joy.

The Flying Carpet, a depiction of the hero of Russian folklore, Ivan Tsarevich,
by Viktor Vasnetsov (1880). Oil, canvas.

  
SO!

~Write a new poem addressing Hello and/or Goodbye.

~Put it in Mr. Linky and leave a comment.

~Come back to read other poems and write comments for the poets. 

~I'll be coming around to visit each of you in the next few days.

A Birthday in April ~ Shakespeare

Today, the 23^rd of April, is the anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth in 1564, and—52 years later—the anniversary of his death.

~Today's Prompt~
Write a new poem inspired by 
Shakespeare, the Bard.

(From Becky To, with permission)

Shakespeare' influence on the English language and on world literature is hard to measure.  Chiefly remembered for his dramatic works, Shakespeare was also an inspired poet. His sonnet sequence - consisting of 154 separate poems - is often cited as "the finest collection of love poems in the English language."  

Title page of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609)

It is also one of the most mysterious as scholars still do not know the identity of the young man and the Dark Lady who inspired them.  

Statue of Shakespeare in London. Photo Taken by Lonpicman

Other major poems by Shakespeare are: Venus and Adonis (1593), The Rape of Lucrece (1594) and A Lover's Complaint (1609).  These last are narratives complete with drama. In dialogue, they would be plays.

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~Ideas for your Shakespeare-inspired poem~

1. I imagine that I could share a joke or critique with Shakespeare!  What about you?  Try a poem of dialogue with Shakespeare.  
2. I imagine rivaling him in writing a poem to or about my love.   How about trying this, in sonnet form or free verse?
3. Or you may celebrate Shakespeare by letting a phrase or a line of his inspire a poem of your own.  You may choose any line from any Shakespeare’s drama or poems.  Here are a few of my favorite lines which may inspire you: 

~“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.” 
~“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?” 
~“So are you to my thoughts as food to life, or as sweet seasoned showers are to the ground.”
~“Why should we rise because 'tis light? Did we lie down because t'was night?” 
~"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” 
~“What is your substance, whereof are you made,That millions of strange shadows on you tend?"
~“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
~“If music be the food of love, play on.”
~"Look, how a bird lies tangled in a net, So fasten'd in her arms Adonis lies"
~“Now I will believe that there are unicorns...”
~“Sweet are the uses of adversity Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”

Find Shakespeare quotes on the web everywhere, including:  

• "William Shakespeare: Quotes and quotations"
• Goodreads: William Shakespeare
• Google will give you the source for any of the quotes above: Just plug them in.

Enjoy!  
Remember to share the link to your new poem on Mr. Linky and leave a comment.  
Then come back to read and comment on the rest.

Susan Says: Stretching Comparisons

As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.

The wind scatters the leaves on the ground,

 but the live timber burgeons with leaves

again in the season of spring returning.

So one generation of men will grow while another dies.

~Homer’s Iliad 6.146-49

Hello Toads,

Today’s challenge is to write an extended simile or metaphor.  The bleak quote above contains one example and Momaday’s poem “A SIMILE” provides another:  

A Simile

What did we say to each other
that now we are as the deer
who walk in single file
with heads high
with ears forward
with eyes watchful
with hooves always placed on firm ground
in whose limbs there is latent flight 

By Navarre Scott Momaday

(Posted from Poem Hunter)

Like Homer’s first line, Momaday’s first two lines set up a comparison that would be obscure if not for his continuation of that comparison in the following 6 lines.  Note that once the deer are mentioned in the comparison, everything that follows describes the deer.  “We” are “as the deer” in all of these ways:  walking singly and carefully, positioning our heads and ears, watching and having the potential to bolt away at any second.  In a poem of only 8 lines, Momaday makes us see a relationship as a couple or a group of deer moving cautiously.

White-tailed deer “About to Take Flight” by Emery Way

The poem delights me because the comparison is so unexpected and and because, through the deer, Momaday both reveals a relationship in crisis and provides a tone of regret with hope that something of former times can be salvaged.

The Challenge:  Write a brand new poem using an extended simile or metaphor.

—If you have an idea already, go for it!

—If not, consider building on Momaday’s model to describe a relationship.  Using his first two lines, change the comparison from deer to something else that will clarify the relationship you are describing.   Here are a few possibilities:

What did we say to each other

that now we are as a shiny new Ferrari . . .

or

What did we say to each other

that now we are as two cats playing . . .

or

What did we do to each other

that now we are like cheerios in milk . . .

or

I love you as much as the moon loves the sun . . . .

Here is an example of doing this “Wrong” by describing the relationship instead of what you are comparing it to:

We are behaving like a two-headed calf

We each want to be the boss

We take off without consulting with each other … etc.

Possible Corrections:

We are behaving like a two-headed calf

            who can’t have one head lead without the other butting

who stands still out of total bewilderment … etc.

or

What did we say to each other that

now we are as a two-headed calf

who cannot get away from itself

no matter how hard it tries and

who must bend when its other wishes  … etc.

~

I am looking forward to reading 
your creatively  s t r e t c h e d comparisons.

~

Please link your new poem back to Mr. Linky, leave a comment for us on this site, and then be sure to read the other poems here in the Imaginary Garden.  Enjoy!

~

First-and-Last Lines

Susan, here, and already excited about reading the results of this challenge which asks:

What is Love?

Love Park,  Philadelphia,  by ecospc

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day in the USA, in South Africa, and other places that have been touched by European cultures.  Putting aside the religious and the commercial histories of the day, I ask you simply, what is love?

My favorite definition of romantic love:

 “. . . two solitudes protect and border and greet each other,” 

comes from Rainer Marie Rilke’s 7^th letter in Letters to a Young Poet.  Rilke sees young love as flawed in its groping.  He says in this letter that each love is a learning ground for the next until this respectful place is discovered. 

Rodin’s “The Kiss”

In contrast, some of you know (or are) couples who, as Rosalind says in Shakespeare’s As you Like it:

. . . no sooner
met but they looked, no sooner looked but they
loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner
sighed but they asked one another the reason, no
sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;
and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs
to marriage which they will climb . . . .  (5ii)

Some of our parents have loved each other for decades, some have never loved.  I myself am a hermit whose deepest love—one with whom I shared solitude and theatre and reading aloud—died too soon.  I celebrate all kinds of love: love present and absent, love of a partner, love of parents, children, friends, words, work, open sky and so many things that you and I speak of in and out of poetry.

Eternal Love Locks, Pont de l’Archevêché,  photo by Susan

Today, I ask you to write about an event that clarified for you what love is.   

But wait!  

I did not forget about “First and Last Lines”!  
Here is one more example:

Jane Austin’s romantic comedy of manners, Pride and Prejudice, begins with an assertion about romance and ends with a success story:

First Line:  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Last Line:  With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.

“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.”    

C. E. Brock illustration for the 1895 edition of Jane Austen's  Pride and Prejudice 

The first line equates love with economics.  The last line shows a love that overcomes class distinctions and provides room for friendship and gratitude. In between, the individuals destined for each other overcome false pride and social prejudice in a series of events that define true love.  Finally, as in all Austin novels, Elizabeth and Darcy’s love is rewarded with the wealth of contentment.  

Now, the challenge!  

Choose an event to use in a poem, one that answers the question “What is love?”   You may have more than one answer, but choose one focus in your poem.  

Alternative challenges:

Inspired by an illustration in this prompt—include the link

or

An Inner monologue of characters from literature or film

or

U

se the last line from one of your own love poems to start a new poem—link the poem of origin.

Enjoy!

A Love for the Arts by Infamous Hussy 

Please post the link to your new poem in Mr. Linky, and leave a comment in the Garden.  Take time to read and comment on other poems linked here for love.