Bookspine Poetry

The folks at Tweetspeak Poetry and Brainpickings issued a challenge to create poems using titles from your bookshelf . The exercise had me scouring my shelves and then the library when my selections fell short . Given how much thought goes into choosing a phrase that summarizes an entire book , titles provide a glorious resevoir of words . It's more difficult to find titles with verbs .

Much to my surprise , I found that a cohesive poem could be made from an author salad that mixed Dickens , Poe , Wharton and C.S. Lewis with newbies like James Patterson , Wally Lamb and James Frey. It was a delight to make room for one of my favorite current authors , Leonard Sweet . His title , Strong in the Broken Places , could be a life motto (or might read well on a tombstone , hmm , I'll ponder that) . Thanks, Tweetspeak! I haven't had this much fun in a long time.

A Grief Observed

bleak house born of silence

the age of innocence

a heart of darkness

  spectacular sins

    a plague of secrets

now you see her

a descent into the maelstrom

avowals and denials

  she's come undone

    a million little pieces

now you see her

up from the blue

choosing to see

  a distant memory

    the wolf at the door

now you see her

bring up the bodies

salvage the bones

strong in the broken places

fly away home

Title authors:

C.S. Lewis

Charles Dickens/Sherrilyn Kenyon
Edith Wharton
Joseph Conrad
John Piper
John Lescroat

James Patterson
Edgar Allen Poe
G. K. Chesterton
Wally Lamb
James Frey

James Patterson
Susan Henderson
Marybeth Chapman
Traci Depree
Jack Higgins

James Patterson
Hilary Mantel
Jesmyn Ward
Leonard Sweet
Jennifer Weiner

Leaning

She is bent now

like a tree that leans

paying homage to the earth.

She spins yarns of days

on Colorado plains.

She rode fierce on a horse

putting cattle in their place.

She loved a preacher

in a time when a woman,

stood by her man

like a dress in the door.

She was the stronger,
of that he was sure

and we, too.

She doesn't say 

but we know she is ready. 

Her body betrays her, 

and hurts.

She'll leave us adrift

and we'll wonder

if there's life

beyond the leaning tree.

Tree photo by Luke Andrew Scowen Creative Commons via flickr
www.flickr.com/lukeas09

"She" was my grandmother, a towering tree till she died.

In response to an Every Day Poems prompt to write a poem using
the phrase "beyond the leaning tree"

The Gravity of Redemption

I'm a firm believer that the Event in the garden back in the beginning could've ended another way. That the dice weren't loaded in the Snake's direction. But the girl eats the apple and Eden is lost. 

From where we sit, it looks like the Snake wins. We are bent, we are fractured, we are crushed in this life. But Love finds a way.

in the place where light began

the Event was not inevitable

horizon was birth,

not a final death 

a black hole bends all light

around an event horizon

a final luminous ellipse

mocks all light and life

gravity crushes

and swallows whole

angles of radiance

from infinite distances

 

on the other side of darkness

the un-real faces Real

darkness cannot extinguish the light

and Love will not be mocked

Love bends the light

and gathers strands

fractured by the

weight of us

all that has gone before

all traces of the former

are crushed and
swallowed whole

variegated threads

of shimmering light

converge into a brilliant
Singularity

angels of radiance 
from infinite distances
are redeemed

Incandescence

The Kattegat is a sea to the west of Sweden. It is north enough that the water never warms. In the long days of summer the sun sets well after eleven. The sea lights with plankton as you move through the water. 

There are hundreds of tiny islands dotting the Kattegat. In 2002, Mike and I stayed in a farmhouse with no electricity on a biscuit private isle. The Swedes are made of sterner stuff - each island has a dock with a sauna. It is customary to heat the sauna to temperatures just shy of surface-of- the-sun hot. At which point you'll do anything to escape the burn, including jumping into what feels like Artic waters. And so the cycle goes...

in August we swam at midnight

with seaweed that lit the Kattegat

and caressed our undraped bodies

wet sparks winking code to the moon.

we laid out a sailor's feast

amid a cityscape of candles

and a feverish sauna 

that singed our lungs

and spurred our plunge

into the boreal sea.

we wasted need,
 radiant heat

flickers turned to fire.

we hindered dawn one golden night

on a star-drenched Swedish isle.

Sea Bliss

"When I fully enter time's swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here"

~Ann Voskamp, author of 1000 Gifts

Ann Voskamp's 1000 Gifts set me on a journey (along with a few hundred thousand other people) to be thankful for the gift of every moment. I began my list of 1000 gifts on a trip to Cabo San Lucas in February. These are a few of the moments.

Pearl-skin sentries 
quell the crush 
of tidal cliffs

their red tile hats

hide shaded eyes 
in silence they stand watch

as fixed-wing gulls 
ride invisible swells 
of breezes that blow

white-lipped lapis 
onto a popsicle stick of sand 
that vanishes slow.

An elegant script
of morse code clouds 
scrolls across the sun

whose final work
a crescent curve,

settles in the sea.

Inside, a milky veil

breathes through the open door

     

and a daisy fan on the

ceiling above whispers

he loves me
    he loves me
       he loves me 

in a rhythmic hum.

I felt fair(ly) happy with this poem until I read writer/poet LL Barkat's "Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity and Writing." She notes how frequent(ly) writers try to channel Ann Voskamp (I could hear her laughing as I read the words). Though achieving Voskamp's voice is an exercise in futility, I fell prey to the trap nonetheless.  I revised the poem and only LL can decide if I succeeded. Mea culpa: I couldn't resist dropping an -ly or two. Who can blame me - adverbs are evil. 

The Value of Writing Prompts: Every Day Poems

By writing much, one learns to write well

- Robert Southey

Though I’m not new to writing, I’ve recently put a timid toe into the foreign water of poetry. Because poems are generally limited to a page, the topics and themes of a “poet” (I use the term loosely when describing myself) vary more frequently than those of a novelist/essayist. Inspiration can be difficult and thought ruts are a daily hazard.

In January I discovered a poetry site called Every Day Poems. The site encourages readers to read and write a poem every day. If you connect to EDPoems on Facebook or Twitter they offer poetry prompts - photos or phrases - to get your creative juices flowing.

Since my discovery of Every Day Poems, I’ve written poems on topics I never would have considered otherwise. A recent prompt was a photo connoting a modern day “Little Red Riding Hood.” As a result, I penned this re-telling of the familiar fable. 

What if the story you've always heard about Little Red Riding Hood wasn't the story at all? What if Little Red went to the woods, not to visit her Grandmother, but to visit a love? What if she went to the woods or vengeance sake, to settle a score with the one who stole the heart of her lover? What if there were two girls in the woods that day, and only one survived. What if there was no wolf at all?

Little Red Retold

No one knows,

but we, the trees

the truth behind the tale

of the fabled one,

with alabaster skin

and a crimson riding cloak

who went to a house,

so deep in a wood

no one should hear a scream

and there saw the girl,

not old, but a girl

who rivaled for the heart

of a woodsman who

heard the screams of the girl

and rushed to see his love

in a blood-red haze,

of life and death

and competing vacant stares.

It was a Grimm tableau,

of horror and hate

that turned into a tale

of a devious wolf

and an innocent girl

who trusted far too much.

For who could know,

but we, the trees

that only a Tell Tale Heart

wears a Scarlet cape,

with a cumbrous hood

into a dangerous wood?

Though no wolf prowled,

we heard the screams

that came from the daggered girl,

not the one with the cape

but the one who was true,

who lived in a treacherous wood

I have no illusions the poem is a masterwork, but the prompt forced me to tackle an unusual subject, which is great practice and essential to good writing.

For a scant $2.99/yr, Every Day Poems delivers sunshine to your inbox each morning and writing prompts that inspire. This small investment pays back in spades. Buy a year of Every Day Poems here:

Full Disclosure™: There may or may not be a coveted chocolate prize for those who participate in their May Theme – Spontaneity.

Bearing

we lay

across warm wooden planks

your raw-honeyed voice

a basket that bears

endless days

now we are snow angels

in a field of tall grass

now we conspire with

the owl we bear

witness to

stars

but you ride

leaving a tiny counter

piled with speckled notebooks

creamy sugar whispers call

from pages worn

*Inspired by  Kimberlee Conway Ireton's "On Inspiration"