Tag Archives: Poetry Friday

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PF: Persona Poems

It’s the first Friday of the month and that means our Inklings’ challenge is due. This month’s challenge was issued by Margaret Simon, who asked us to write a persona poem. In short, a persona poem “has a specific audience, conveys a message, is written in the voice of another person, place, or thing, uses direct address.” I checked out a couple of fabulous examples, including Sylvia Plath’s stunning Mirror, and Patricia Smith’s Katrina. These were both inspiring and intimidating.

After considering a few options, The Giving Tree popped into my head– Yes, that controversial children’s story woven by the oh-so-talented Shel Silverstein. Is it a cautionary tale? A tale of unbound love or unboundaried love? A warning to a parent? A warning to a child? Selfless? Abusive? For some reason, I found myself wanting to consider the Tree’s perspective. To be honest, even though I wrote it, I find myself a little uncomfortable with the voice in this poem. But right or wrong, here’s what she had to say:

The Giving Tree Speaks

I see you cringe as you turn
each page.
You judge me, don’t you?
For giving and giving
until it seems all
is gone.
Even as my story resonates,
it leaves you uncomfortable,
doesn’t it?
“Too much…” I hear you whisper.

You don’t see that the giving 
was a choice.
My choice.
I gave actively
with love, energy, 
full-hearted generosity–
I chose not to await
time’s
slow
drain.

Don’t you see?
I’m in the same place
I would have been
ultimately
eventually
But
I shaped myself
through my giving, 
got here on my own terms.

You may see only a stump, but
my roots are secure, and
did you notice?
As our story ends
we are resting…
together.
What more could I want?

And I am happy.  

©Molly Hogan, draft

If you’d like to see what the other Inklings have done with this challenge, click on their links:
Mary Lee Hahn
Catherine Flynn
Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon

This week’s Poetry Friday challenge is hosted by Linda Baie at her blog, Teacher Dance.

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PF: A Wordle Poem

This week has been our winter break, and I’ve had minimal plans and lots of down time. Sometimes that feels good, sometimes not as much. It’s been quite cold in the mornings, and I’ve struggled to find the motivation to get up and out. I teeter back and forth on the balance beam between sluggish and relaxed.

Yesterday morning, although the skies promised a humdrum sunrise (is there such a thing, really?), I drove down to watch day begin at the river. I wasn’t the only one appreciating the views.

When I got home, I stopped to feed the birds before heading inside. As I neared the feeders, mourning doves departed in a flurry of feather and sound. A cardinal serenaded me from a nearby tree, and chickadees and crows chimed in. There were a few more unknown calls rounding out the chorus. So much singing!

Soon after coming inside, the morning lured me outside again to wander around my yard, listen to the bird song and try to capture a few photos. I can’t remember how long it had been since I’d done that. Even though it was still cold and none of my photos were particularly inspired, It felt oh-so-good.

When I sat down later for my daily Wordle, my four guesses (in bold) seemed to flow out of the morning and afterward, into this poem:

Today I will drink fresh morning air
inhale rippling bird song
and let both guide me
to build a day
worth remembering

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts at her blog The Opposite of Indifference . Be sure to stop by today or any day for some inspiration!

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PF: In Vino Veritas

In vino veritas

My relationship to poetry
is much like mine to wine
I don’t know the terminology
but I know what I like
what flows into me
with soft notes of currant
or spicy pepper
subtle pleasures that
have me sipping more
and slipping into giddy

Once someone talked to me
about the poetic use of anaphora
and I momentarily pictured 
elegant Greek vases
crusted in time
holders of sweet, secret ambrosia…

Was I so wrong?

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Carol Varsalona at her blog, Beyond Literacy Link.

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Poetry Friday: Secrets

For the past several years I’ve enjoyed the creative prompts for the New Year Poetry Challenge (NYPC) from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. Each day from mid-December to mid-January, they offer up an original and rich prompt, encouraging you to take it in any direction you’d like. You even have the option to send in one poem to be considered for entry in their annual NYPC chapbook. This year I shared the first ten prompts with my writing group, and Catherine Flynn liked one so much that she chose it for our Inklings challenge. The theme: Secrets. The task: “Write a poem about secrets——family, community/societal, governmental, personal, etc.”

Way back in December, when I first responded to this prompt in my notebook, I was also working on Heidi Mordhorst’s fabulous Yuletide prompts, one of which was to “try to write about effort”. These two prompts combined into this poem:

This pen holds secrets

You can tell by the way
it resists the pull of paper
how you have to exert force
to mark the page
how the ink bleeds and blots
and each letter requires
just a bit more effort
so that your hand aches
as the weight of those secrets
coagulates
until you
and the pen
come to
a stuttering
silent
stop.

©Molly Hogan

This week Mary Lee Hahn hosts the Poetry Friday Roundup at her blog, A(nother) Year of Reading. She shares her response to this prompt there. To check out what the other Inklings did with this prompt, go to the links below:

Catherine Flynn
Linda Mitchell
Heidi Mordhorst
Margaret Simon

And then, just because everyone should listen to this song more frequently…

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Why I Take Pictures 


I always look forward to writing in response to Ethical ELA's monthly prompts, even though I generally keep my responses in my notebook. One day last week Dave Wooley offered up a prompt. He invited people to use Leah Kindler's "Why I Write Poetry" as a mentor and respond with a list poem using anaphora (which is, according to Merriam-Webster, not a Greek vase ;), but instead "a word or expression...repeated at the beginning of a number of sentences, clauses, or phrases.")

If you know me or follow my blog, you know that I love to take pictures and often share them on Facebook. It's become an essential part of my world. It seemed natural to ponder why I take photographs.

Why I Take Pictures 
(after Leah Kindler and Major Jackson)

Because each dawn is a promise
Because it slows me down from rushrushrush 
	to hushhushhush
Because it helps me to lose
   and find myself, simultaneously
Because when I switch my perspective
	new worlds are unveiled
Because I can escape the heaviness of today 
	through the portal of a lens
Because there’s magic in watching a heron
	unfold its wings and rise from the silent marsh
Because sometimes deep in the core 
   of a pile of haphazardly heaped snow
	a blue heart glows
Because the sky is a living canvas as is the marsh
	as is the forest as is each individual tree
Because a reflection reflects, and the birds, oh the birds!
Because time ceases to matter
Because sometimes I can capture what I see	
	and what I feel 
   and then transcend both
Because even when my camera is not in my hand, 
	it’s tuned me to resonate 
   to the exquisite 
Because even when my breath exhales into frost and my fingers
	bone-ache with cold,
	joy flutters and takes flight.

©Molly Hogan, draft

Yesterday morning I was trying to be productive and take advantage of a two-hour delay, but then I saw the ice outside, and the flocks of robins, and before I knew it, I was out the door and taking pictures...in my slippers!

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is with Susan Thomsen at her blog, Chicken Spaghetti.

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Cheerios with Kooser and Harrison

A month or two ago, I made a deliberate change to my morning routine. While enjoying my regular bowl of cereal and my last few moments at home before heading to school, I stopped looking at my phone and playing word games. Instead, I chose to use that time to read. I didn’t want to continue reading my “bedtime” book in the morning, but instead wanted to dip into books that lent themselves to short spans of reading.

The first book I read this way was “Do Interesting-Notice. Collect. Share.” by Russell Davies. It’s full of short chapters and all sorts of rich thoughts about creativity. “Interesting isn’t a personality, it’s a decision. Don’t hunt for diamonds. Get fascinated by pebbles.” It was delightful to nibble at a few chapters each morning.

Now I’ve moved on to read “Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry” by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison. It’s comprised of short poems written back and forth between those two men. It’s a joy to read as they explore friendship, nature, aging, and more. Their poems are insightful, irreverent, humorous, poignant and wise. I love that none of the poems are attributed so you can just lose yourself in the flow of their exchange. Here are a few of my favorites: 

All I want to be
is a thousand blackbirds 
bursting from a tree, 
seeding the sky.

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At the tip of memory's 
great funnel-cloud 
is the nib of a pen.

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The moon put her hand
over my mouth and told me
to shut up and watch. 

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What if everyone you've loved
were still alive? 
That's the province 
of the young, who don't know it. 

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The hay in the loft
misses the night sky,
so the old roof
leaks a few stars.


It was so hard to stop sharing favorites! What a treasure of a book! My copy is fluttering with so many sticky notes marking different poems, that I'm pretty sure if a breeze came through, it could take flight. Or maybe it already has.

I'd love to know if you have any books that might fit well with my new morning routine. Any suggestions?

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tracey Kiff-Judson at her blog. If you’re a Monopoly fan, you definitely need to stop by and check out her post!

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A New Year and a New Challenge

This month it was Heidi’s turn to pose the challenge for our writing group. Not one to do things by half, she created an elaborate, arrive-in-the-actual-mail, beautiful “12 Days of Yuletide Poetry Prompts”. Wow! She wrote: “My gift to you: a collection of 12 poetry prompts based on the words of my family’s Yuletide tradition. Starting on Dec. 21, the Winter Solstice, we light an additional candle each day which celebrates a “gift of the human spirit.” Pick one that appeals and address it however you like!”

Each day it was like a little gift awaited me, and I had great fun responding to the prompts in my notebook. Today I’m sharing my response to the first prompt for December 21st which was: “Call back the dying sun using 3 repetitions.” I imagined a lofty tone and a lovely, lyrical response. I even started writing that way in my notebook:

Oh, golden orb
    whose fading has left fields to fallow
    and set green to yield to white
    return, we beseech you!

But somehow things went in a different direction.

Beseeching The Sun on the Solstice

Each morning it rises
within me
a dark shadow to match
the dismal grey that’s saturated the sky
in a ceaseless array of somber tones
for seemingly weeks now.

The mounting dread and dismay
at day
after day
after day
with no sun,
no light, 
no warmth.

It’s the darkest day now
and it feels like there’s not a ray of hope
If the damn sun
doesn’t come out soon
I’m going to dissolve
into a million glum, sodden clumps
of sorrow and gloom
and rain down on everyone around me
just like the unrelenting drizzle
that’s been permeating the ground
leaving soggy trails of muck that suck
at my feet and bog me
down
down
down
until I whimper and whine
and retreat
to stare out the windows
into the abyss

There’s nothing benign about this relentless, 
repressive squash-your-spirits
grey, grey, grey

Sun,
I’m begging you
I’m pleading
I’m down on my knees
Come back!
Come back!
Come back!

©Molly Hogan

As you may surmise, December yielded day after day of no sun in my neck of the woods. No snow either. Just grey drizzle and chill. This is not typical, and let’s just say, I did not weather it with grace. I vacillated between wanting to rant and rave and feeling absolutely depleted and depressed. Writing about it helped a little. Having prompts to ponder everyday was another bright spot. (Thanks, Heidi!)

If you want to see what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below:
Heidi
Mary Lee
Catherine
Linda
Margaret

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Marcie Flinchum Atkins today.

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Sticky Buns

In our home, it’s not Christmas without sticky buns. This year I briefly toyed with the idea of not making them– maybe I was a bit more tired, maybe I was feeling less than festive- but still I made them, and as they always do, they worked their magic.

Sticky Buns

I did not want to cook
or bake or clean away
the dirtied dishes
yet again.

Still, with a sigh
I measured, heated, cooled, combined,
set aside the bowl for the first rise.

Later, I rolled out the dough–
grown with the mysterious gift of yeast
to double its size–
then spread the melted butter
sprinkled clouds of cinnamon sugar.

Slowly my shoulders relaxed,
my jaw softened as I eased
into each step
following the journey of the recipe
forward and also backward
to my mother
to my grandmother.

How many times did they stand just so-
alone in a kitchen
maybe tired and distracted
creating the sticky buns 
that sweetened each  
holiday morning of my childhood?

Did they ever imagine that my thoughts
of them would be forever
cinnamon-brown-sugar-sweet
tightly-rolled and baked to golden perfection
the centerpiece of every Christmas morning
past, present
and future?

©Molly Hogan, draft

The holidays are steeped in memories. As I wrote in my post on Tuesday, they are wrapped in past and present. In my world, sticky buns are a perfect example of this.

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Michelle Kogan. She’s sharing a wonderful assortment of elfchens. Be forewarned: I suspect that writing them might be as addictive as eating sticky buns! Just one more…

May the past infuse your present with sweetness and a sense of connection as we enter the new year.

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PF: Considering the spider

Earlier this fall when I was at the marsh, I spied a spider, peering from a web constructed in the whirl of a milkweed leave. My pictures didn’t turn out, but I’ve thought about that spider again and again: There was something about it, its web, and it’s watchful stance. It seemed poised at the edge of advance and retreat. I could relate only too well.

Considering the spider

What does Spider think
as it poises itself there?
Is it rapt at fall’s advance,
at the golden autumn air?
Or does it sense its coming end…
the frailness of its lair?

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Karen Edmisten at her blog.

PS Here are a couple of other spiders I did manage to “capture” early this fall.

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PF: Finding poetry in prose

This month Linda challenged our writing group to write a prose piece and find a poem in it. She offered a variety of options within that challenge, but I opted to go with the original basic prompt. Thanks, Linda, for the nudge to revisit this small moment at recess and find the poetry within it.

The breeze blew erratically in unpredictable puffs. With every gust, leaves flew off the tree in a crimson cloud, like a flock of birds, spinning and twirling away into the chilly air. Around the tree and across the fields and playground, children played. Some kicked around a soccer ball. Some were involved in an intense game of kickball. Others played chase or pumped themselves high into the achingly blue sky on swings. And some twirled and swirled beneath the tree, like the leaves themselves. Their hands were outstretched, reaching to catch the falling leaves. Leaves falling like rain onto their heads, into their hands, and onto the ground around them. They spun and spun, their faces lit with joy and autumn sun. And they laughed at the unexpected wonder of it all.

Soaring

Like a flock of birds
or falling leaves
children
twirl
swirl
their wonder-washed faces
shiny and bright
giddy with autumn joy

©Molly Hogan

Click on the links below to see how the other Inklings met this challenge:
Linda Mitchell
Margaret Simon
Heidi Mordhorst
MaryLee Hahn
Catherine Flynn

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Buffy Silverman at her blog.