Thank you to all who participated in April’s poetry challenge. I will now erase everything and prepare for your efforts in May. The new word for the month is TOUCH.
If you are joining us this month for the first time, welcome. I hope you will consider writing a poem inspired by the single word — TOUCH — and posting here on my blog. I’ve been hosting this exercise since October 2009 so this marks the 176th consecutive month that poets in all stages and from across the country have contributed to Word of the Month Poetry Challenge.
Your poem can be long or short, verse or free verse, humorous or serious…whatever your muse decides to do. What we all have in common is that we start with the same word, mine it for its stories, pick one, and write a poem. To post your poem, click on the box along the top of this page that says Adult W.O.M. Poems. Scroll to the bottom, type or paste your poem into the box there, and click. Easy as that.
If you are new to my blog, I’ll have to okay you the first time, and after that you can come and go any time you wish. I love to see new poets join us. This month maybe you’ll be one of them.
For long evenings and nights we were serenaded by male toads trilling their hearts out, looking for love. Only when they became quiet out there in the dark did we suspect that the little lotharios had scored. We still hear an occasional song but the mating season has essentially passed, and so have the briefly happy couples. The evidence of their success lines the water accumulated on top of our pool.
gone the mommies gone the poppies gone the hoppy hoppy hoppies no more mammies no more pappies no more happy happy happies left the kiddos on their own now they must grow up alone for future mommies future poppies future hoppy hoppy hoppies
Yesterday when WYATT TOWNLEY’s guest column was printed (and shared with you) something had happened in the layout process and her poem was printed in double space, all one stanza. We’re hoping to get the correction made, but if can we can’t, I’m printing the column here, with the poem as it should be. I’m very sorry for the error.
WYATT TOWNLEY Poetry from Daily Life
My guest today is Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita, Wyatt Townley, who lives in eastern Kansas. Wyatt has written poetry since childhood, from free verse to villanelles to pattern poems. Favorite book projects include The Afterlives of Trees and most recently, Rewriting the Body. Wyatt is tall for her age, but short beside her 7-foot husband. She loves to look up—at her husband, at weather, at stars. Her (no longer) secret mission was to be the first poet in space. ~ David L. Harrison
TO YOUR HEALTH
Some readers feel intimidated by poetry. Maybe somewhere along the way, the emphasis was placed on what a poem means. What a poem “means” is the consolation prize. Besides, nobody knows—not the teacher, not the reader, sometimes not even the author.
What matters is not what a poem means, but what it does to us, where it takes us, and how it moves us. One of poetry’s best features is the element of surprise—the turn with a new view around its corner.
When you find a poem that helps you, I invite you to commit it to memory. That way you can give it to others (and to yourself!) for the rest of your life. Memorizing is like any muscle that grows stronger with use—and the cognitive benefits are well documented.
My own practice is to laminate a half-dozen copies of a poem and spread them around the house wherever I tend to land: favorite chair, bedside table, back pocket. I take them on the trails and walk to their rhythms. It’s like sipping a wonderful drink, just a line or a couplet at a time, repeated until integrated. Knowing a poem by heart is a gift that keeps on giving.
At breakfast in our house, we launch the day by reading a poem aloud—a daily vitamin. Here’s the first poem of my latest book, Rewriting the Body.
IT’S EASY
to enter the room of this poem. Less so to stay. But do
until this line ends and begins again, dropping
to the next stanza. If you’re still here, have a drink, have
the run of the place, whatever you like in the right glass. Clink!
And the view—take your pick: an ocean under a stick of moon,
or this one I’ve got at the edge of the woods in the softest rain
that hangs off the undersides of branches, each drop holding a world
about to fall. And when it does, it isn’t gone. Inside this book
are other rooms, a whole house curled inside a tree. I’ll leave
the porchlight on.
Poet Laureate of Kansas Emerita, Wyatt has published six books. Her poetry has appeared in venues as diverse as The Paris Review and Scientific American. She was commissioned to write poems that now hang in libraries from the new Lenexa City Center Library in Kansas to the Space Telescope Science Institute Library in Baltimore, home of the Hubble. www.WyattTownley.com
Each of my guests has brought something of value to the conversation and I’m loving it. From the comments I receive, I know that you approve of them too. Thank you, dear Wyatt, for your sage insight, advice, and example of your work. They are all greatly appreciated!
We have yet another treat coming up this weekend on Poetry from Daily Life. My guest will be Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita, WYATT TOWNLEY. Wyatt has written poetry since childhood, from free verse to villanelles to pattern poems. Favorite book projects include The Afterlives of Trees and most recently, Rewriting the Body.
Wyatt and I have a good start on a manuscript together. As soon as we find an editor, we’ll finish it. Thank you in advance, Wyatt, for adding your voice to the conversation.
Children's Author David L. Harrison's Blog 