Tag Archives: Poetry Friday

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A Wordle Poem

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t played yesterday’s Wordle, do not go any further! (I’m not even sure if you can go back a day to play, but I don’t want to take any chances! That’s why I waited until Saturday to post– A Wordle-spoiler is an evil thing, indeed!)

So, you might have guessed that I’m addicted to Wordle (and Connections and Spelling Bee and all sorts of word games…) and play daily. A couple of years ago I used to use my Wordle guesses to write poems. I’ve fallen out of that habit, but yesterday the urge struck me to try it again. I solved Wordle in three guesses, and these were my three words (last chance to avoid the spoiler!!): scold, clean, leech.

Here’s the poem they inspired:

August Resistance

As summer’s last days unfold,
I will not scold myself for
failing to clean, to organize,
to do one thing, then yet another.
I refuse to allow duty
to leech joy
from these precious budding days.

Instead, I will honor 
their haphazard blossoming.
I will simply be
content
as I am
amidst the glorious chaos
of my unweeded garden.

©Molly Hogan

Here’s hoping you’re enjoying every bit of the unfolding of these golden summer days.

The Poetry Friday Roundup this week is with Rose at her blog, Imagine the Possibilities.

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Poetry Friday is Here! Considering Joy

Welcome to Poetry Friday! I’m delighted to be hosting this week’s Roundup, even though it did sneak up on me. (Where did July go anyway?)

by Stephanie Corfee

I’ve been thinking about joy a fair bit recently. I’ve been considering what it is, where I find it, how I nurture and spread it, etc. Way back in May, I read the transcript of a fabulous 2023 commencement address given by Sarah Leavitt to students graduating from the UBC School of Creative Writing. Entitled Joyful Persistence , it was all about finding joy in creative practice. Here’s a small quote to entice you to find some extra time to read it:

“For most of my life, my art-making, whether it was drawing, writing or making comics, felt painful and fraught. But now – most of the time – creative practice is something that steadies me, something I rely on to think and feel my way through the world. It’s a source of deep joy. I’m going to share some ideas with you today that have helped me make that shift.”

slide from Sarah Leavitt’s presentation

At about the same time that I read this, I happened to read Mary Oliver’s , Don’t Hesitate. The final line “Joy is not made to be a crumb” sang for me. Don’t you just love it? I returned to it recently, and it inspired me to write this golden shovel, which is still a work in progress.

Joy
after Mary Oliver’s “Don’t Hesitate”

It sneaks up on you. Joy-
a whisper, a flutter, and whoosh! there it is,
rich, heady and full throated, not
something to nod at in passing, but made
to be fully savored, to
wander and wallow in. Stop! Be
greedy! Gobble up each morsel! This is a
moment to lick your plate clean of every crumb.

©Molly Hogan, draft

Then, in a lovely moment of serendipity, I came across this quote:

Joy as insurrection…wow!

Consider this an invitation to rise up against the oppression of fear, and stir up the pot of joy with big, messy strokes! One way to do so is by sending some poetry out into the world, so you’re invited to share your link at the Inlinkz link party– Click here to enter . You’re also pretty sure to find some joy by clicking on other links and seeing what’s on offer this week. En-JOY!

PS I may be a bit delayed in making the rounds due to summer visitors, but I’ll be around sooner or later.

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August Challenge: You Are Here

I just returned today from participating in the weeklong Quoddy Writing Retreat with Georgia Heard and Ralph Fletcher. My head is spinning, thoughts are percolating, and I am utterly exhausted. But… it’s the first Friday of August, which means the Inklings’ challenge is due.

This month our challenge came from Catherine Flynn who asked us to respond to Ada Limón’s You Are Here prompt: What would you write in response to the landscape around you? Lke Heidi’s prompt last month, this is such a perfect summer prompt. I really wish I’d been able to dedicate more time to this (and hope to play around with it some more), but the retreat was only a small part of my recent whirlwind of travel and visitors. I’m sharing something I wrote a few weeks ago that more or less fits the bill.

By the way, the sunflowers took off while I was away, and this is what they look like now:

Isn’t it wonderful to reap a reward from NOT weeding? Ah, the benevolence of benign neglect!

If you’d like to check out what the other Inklings did with this prompt, click on their links:
Linda A Word Edgewise
Catherine Reading to the Core
Margaret Reflections on the Teche
Mary Lee Another Year of Reading
Heidi my juicy little universe

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Laura Purdie Salas at her blog. She’s celebrating the book birthday of her newest picture book, “Line Leads the Way”.

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Interwoven Possibilities

Earlier this week I went to the Portland Museum of Art to see a special exhibit entitled: Woven. It features the amazing art of Wabanaki weaver, Jeremy Frey. According to the museum’s publicity, it is “the first-ever major retrospective of a Wabanaki artist in a fine art museum in the United States.” (How can that be?!)

The work is stunning. Frey’s weaving is intricate and elegant. He describes his style as “cutting-edge traditional,” as he embraces traditional materials and methods and uses them in innovative ways. The museum showcased his baskets, but also prints and even a 3D sculpture. I was especially captivated by the sculpture, and by its title and description. I used the latter to create a found poem, which I then combined with a photo of the sculpture.

A different vantage of the sculpture. I guess the wall must be hollow!

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Marcie Flinchum Atkins. Among other things, she’s sharing exciting news about her book, Wait, Rest, Pause: Dormancy in Nature. Be sure to stop by her site and while you’re there, click on a few links to make the rounds!

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Postcard Poems

This month Heidi chose the prompt for our Inkling’s challenge. She asked us to “Write a short postcard poem with choice details of your vacation/holiday/getaway/escape location and activities. Conclude with “Wish you were here” or some variation!”

This was the perfect summer prompt, especially given the fact that I’ve spent almost everyday since school got out on June 13th traveling! My husband and I were in Ireland, Croatia and Slovenia. We just got back this past Wednesday.

Here are a few small poems inspired by sights in Slovenia:

the mountains gather up clouds
drape them like gauzy shawls
across sharp shoulders

©Molly Hogan

within the lush green
a solitary spire rises
heaven bound

©Molly Hogan

Blossom-lined alpine lake
Castle on a hill
Tolling church bells

Fairy tales bloom
alongside the hydrangea

©Molly Hogan

On our final day we hiked along a cliff walk in Howth, Ireland. It was utterly gorgeous scenery, despite the dark skies and cool temperatures, and the perfect way to end our vacation.

Cliff Walk, Howth, Ireland

Heather embroiders the hillside
Far below us, a seal bobs and dives
stitching its wake into the fabric of the sea
Overhead, swathes of clouds batten the skies
I wrap myself in the soft weave of the day
and give thanks

©Molly Hogan

If you’d like to see what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Mary Lee @Another Year of Reading
Heidi @my juicy little universe

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by the glorious Jan Annino at her blog, Bookseed Studio.

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June Inklings Challenge

I was in charge of the Inklings prompt this month, and I shared a mishmash of Pádraig Ó Tuama’s prompt from his recent craft talk: “You, you, you: The Address of Poetry”. In this talk, Pádraig focused on the word “you” in poetry. He mentioned William Waters several times, quoting, “…for a poem to say you is in every case a complex act.” Finally, he invited us all to, ““Write something narrative and by narrative I mean something that has story and observation to it…write about the first time you saw somebody who’s become a you to you…a you that you love to say…detail what else could be seen”… and let those other things convey what it all meant to you.

I found that thinking about using the word “you” in a poem was unsettling. I became hyperaware of it, pondering all the possible nuances of that seemingly simple word, “you”. It reminded me a bit of my first encounter with reading metacognitively. It felt both uncomfortable and enlightening.

I recently had a garden encounter that I first wrote about in my notebook as a poem, and then revised to write in prose for a Slice of Life post. Mary Lee Hahn commented on that post that it could serve as a response for this prompt. I went back to the original poem in my notebook and lifted some phrases from my SOL piece to create this response. The end result clearly doesn’t completely adhere to the prompt, but I’m all about just showing up right now 🙂

(Untitled for now)

On a day of crystal clarity
and blossom-scented air,
I lift the discarded garden pot,
(which I mistakenly thought
was mine) and
you shift the world to shudder
by slithering over
my unsuspecting hand.

My shriek
shatters the blue tranquility.
You and your pot
tumble down to earth.
I windmill backward while
my heart rate soars
skyward.

After many deep breaths,
I step forward,
warily-keen to observe
the glossy sheen of your overlapping scales
the flickering black and red
of your forked tongue.

We pass several long moments,
your unblinking eyes
linked with mine.
The small space between
you and me
hums with possibility.

©Molly Hogan, draft

If you want to see photos from my adventure (or read the prose version), you can visit my Slice of Life post.

We opted to make our prompt optional this month because so many of us have multiple irons in the fire. I’m not sure who all is choosing to respond, but you’ll be rewarded by visiting their blogs anyway. Just click on the links to see what you find!

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe

Tracey Kiff-Judson has the Poetry Friday Roundup at her blog, Tangles and Tails.

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Sustenance

Spring in Maine has been oh-so-beautiful this year and I’ve been soaking it all in. It struck me this morning that I’m living in a sort of emerald “snow” globe. Up on our hilltop, our house is surrounded by shades of green in all directions, and every so often, blossoms flutter down instead of snowflakes. A crescendo of bird song wakes me every morning. It’s pretty awesome!

Poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, shares a poem every day. In the initial part of one recent poem, “Rapture“, she describes stopping to listen after hearing a bird call, and speculates on the power of that listening. The final lines to the poem are:

“…tuning with wonder, thrill lacing
our spellbound silence as we slip
through the narrow gate of amazement
and more wholly into the world.”

I can so relate to that moment of intense awareness and to slipping through that “narrow gate of amazement.” I’ve been thinking a lot about how to find joy in the stress of this mixed-up world, and in the midst of missing those who are no longer with me. I’m so grateful for the the natural beauty that surrounds me and for the consistent entry to wonder that it offers. Such moments sustain me.

Sustenance
after Clint Smith

Today I will
write a poem
about being happy.
It will not be about feeling overwhelmed
by a friend’s recent diagnosis
or by yet another bombing, distress, or disappointment.
It will not splash into a pool of angst
or seek synonyms for sorrow.
But rather it will be about
a soaring hawk, wings glowing impossibly white
against blue skies.
But rather the joy of a sun-speckled path
through river-side woods and time to linger.
But rather how all these things are present
and sometimes they rise
like cream to the surface,
rich, delicious
worthy of savoring.
And how there’s always time later
to linger with grief
and world-weary worries.
But rather, today, I’ll drink deep
and write a poem
about being happy.

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Janice Scully at her blog, Salt City Verse.

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Inklings: Fiddling with Poems

This month Linda Mitchell posed our Inklings challenge. She had us randomly exchange poems amongst our group and invited us to respond in some way or other to that poem, saying we could “fiddle with, play with, tinker, tear-apart, be inspired or stumped by the poem…”

Margaret Simon sent me her poignant poem, “Porch Lights.”

Porch Lights

after Susan Aizenberg

Porches hear their call–
Carolina wrens
Toot-tweet, toot-tweet, toot-tweet

I am practicing
being in the moment

attend only to sound,
this mating echo
before dawn

but a memory comes
of a wren on the back porch

nesting in a flower pot
left behind when we moved Mom

to memory care–
I see a photo of her
on my phone,

smiling as she always has.
She still follows directions.

The doll she holds
needs her more than I do,

now nestled in her arms
where I once lay.             

My sorrow 
draws me to
listen, hear

the wrens joined 
by a chorus
of bus wheels

rushing down my street
as the day begins.

©Margaret Simon

This poem is steeped with love, loss and longing. I considered many responses to it, and found a wonderful one in Charles Wright’s “Sitting at Night on the Front Porch.” Unfortunately, I didn’t write that poem, so I was still at the drawing board. I thought about responding to the grief of losing one’s mother, to the wrens in the discarded nest, to the porch in the title.

I was especially drawn to the porches, though that felt like a light direction to take from this weighty poem. Still, I’m fascinated by them, and by how society has changed since the invention of AC (among other things) took people off their porches and into their homes. I did a little googling and discovered there’s actually a Professional Porch Sitters Union, and they even have a motto: “*Sit down a spell. That can wait.” Oh! I can really get behind that!

In the end, I fiddled around with all sorts of entry points and forms, including triolets, found poems, golden shovels, free verse, haiku and acrostic responses. I’m sharing two of these poems, wishing I’d had a bit more time to work with a triolet that seemed to be coming together.

In the sorrow of a forgotten flower pot, a wren builds its nest

Life is like that
full of paradoxes,
the cloak of our sadness
woven with intermittent
glinting threads of gold
as bright as the echo
of a wren’s call

©Molly Hogan, draft

Sit Down a Spell*

Porches invite you in
Offer respite from blazing heat, incessant rain or the
Rub of daily life. They create a space for
Companionship–a liminal place where
Heartache and joy intertwine,
Embedded within stories and silence…
Sometimes a porch is like a poem

© Molly Hogan, draft

If you’re interested in seeing what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below:

Catherine Flynn
Mary Lee Hahn
Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon

The Poetry Friday Roundup this week is hosted by Buffy Silverman. Her post comes with a trigger warning for those who are snake-phobic. Check it out here!

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PF: Haiku series

This month Mary Lee had our Inklings challenge. She invited us to write a series of haiku about poetry without using the word poetry. I wish I’d had more time to linger with this prompt, but March holds madness not only for basketball players and their fans. This was my liberal translation of the prompt :).


Turn, Turn, Turn*

a rush of syllables
whispers in leaf-lush trees
songs on the breeze

a quickening
leaves and light, autumn-gilded
the haunting cry of geese

skies clear to moonlight 
snow cloaks each branch
all is aglow

a tree exhales—
feathered buds transform
blackbirds take flight

©Molly Hogan, draft
*title credit to Pete Seeger

We’re in the midst of a winter/spring storm as I write this post. School was cancelled today and has already been cancelled for tomorrow. With no power at home, we hear only the crackle of the fires in the wood stoves and a far off hum from neighbors’ generators. Every so often we’re startled by a crack and crash as tree limbs break under the weight of this heavy, wet snow. We’re thankful to be safe and warm.

shattering tree limbs
winter silence splinters
weathering the storm

If you’d like to see what the other Inklings did with this haiku challenge, click on the links below.

Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst
MaryLee Hahn
Catherine Flynn
Margaret Simon

The PF Roundup is hosted this week by Irene Latham at her blog, Live Your Poem. She’s got all sorts of exciting things to share! Be sure to swing by and check it out.

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SOLC Day 8: Boot Camp

March 2024 SOLC–Day 8
A huge thank you to Two Writing Teachers for all that they do to create an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write, learn, share and grow.
http://www.twowritingteachers.org
This post is also for this week’s Poetry Friday.

If you read my post yesterday, you might be wondering if I went to Boot Camp last night or not. Here’s an update…

I get home from school determined to go to Boot Camp, though I do NOT want to do it. Not AT ALL. I am bone tired, physically, but also just so tired of rushing. I want a night where I don’t have to do anything, for at least a little while. Outside, it’s cold and rainy. Inside, the chair beckons. The wood stove beckons. I give in to the lures for just a moment, curl up on the chair, and within moments, fall fast asleep.

I wake up a little bit later and immediately look at my watch.

“Phew! I didn’t miss Boot Camp!” said no one in my house.

With incredible effort and stunning discipline, I overcome the forces of inertia and propel myself into exercise clothes and out the door, whining all the way.

At the Y, before class starts, everyone is throwing around the “f” word.

“We’re going to do centers tonight and you’re going to work really hard!” the instructor says. 

“Fun!” someone replies enthusiastically.

Fun? Huh. That’s not the f word that came to my mind.

“We’ll get the music going and really get into it. You’re going to leave it all out there!” 

“Fun!” someone else chirps happily.

If you’re a fan of the move, “The Princess Bride”, you’ll understand that after a few more “Fun’s”, it was really hard not to say, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” 

Soon enough, the instructor has explained all the stations, and we’re off.

I start with jump roping. I quickly get tired. Keep going! Just distract yourself. Think about something else… I often try to write poetry when insomnia strikes, but I’m pretty sure I can’t compose while bouncing. Just pick a word and rhyme. (Please bear in mind that I’m feeling overwhelmed at this whole exercise Boot Camp thing, so I have to do something to keep going.)

rope
scope
hope 
dope 
dope 
DOPE 
bope? 

BEEP! Next station.

I stumble to the next station, some sort of stair torture.

I recognize that I might be having a less than stellar mindset and try to turn off the negativity.

Come on, Molly. I tell myself in my best cheerleader voice. You can do this. Just try.

try
fly
die 

Ohhhhkay, maybe choose another word. 

The instructor’s voice rises over the music, “If you need to stop and catch your breath, that’s okay.”

Breath, I think, panting heavily and trying to catch mine. Good word. 

breath
death

Okay, maybe this rhyme thing isn’t working so well.  I stop rhyming and try to focus on my form at the current station, but before I know it, I’m rhyming again.

“Finish strong!”

strong 
long
wrong
wrong 
WRONG!

BEEP! 

“Next station!”

I’m now doing something called Crawling Bear. At least I think that’s what the instructor called it. I am literally on my hands and feet with my butt stuck up in the air, scuttling around a marked path. (I’d describe it some more, but you really don’t want to do too much envisioning here.) 

My rhyme brain and negativity decide to join forces.  

What rhymes with suck?

Oh!!! The f word!

So, I repeat that one over and over and over in my head until…

BEEP! 

“Next station!”

And so it goes. 

Eventually it ends. And I did it all. More or less.

On the way home I compose a limerick in honor of the occasion (and so that I could technically link this post to Poetry Friday lol). 

There once was a foolish old lass
who started an exercise class
Her thighs were a-quakin’
her biceps a shakin’
‘Twas all a big pain in her a*s!

If you’re interested in checking out some much more meaningful rhyming and poetry, head over to Laura Purdie Salas’s blog. She’s hosting Poetry Friday and celebrating the launch of her newest book, “Oskar’s Voyage”. You’ll find some fascinating tidbits on the book’s creation, especially how it moved from prose to poetry.