Hey y’all. I’ve been participating in National Poetry Month with a challenge through Writing Heights. And let me tell you, nothing humbles you more than being in the presence of such amazingly talented poets (especially when they all decry their lack of talent). We didn’t have any gentleman join us in the challenge, and I will say that I think the supportive structure of mature women in a safe environment really gave birth to vibrant and visceral work. It reminds me how powerful women are. How intelligent. How kind. How empathetic. Am I saying that men are not these things? No. I’m saying that for too long women in this weird patriarchal, capitalist, christian nationalist environment have been silenced, reduced to objects, and vilified for expressing themselves. It is grounding to know, despite the illusions spread to keep them subservient, women are in fact the creators.
That was a long intro to these poems. One, from a prompt this month. One I wrote as an exercise. Neither edited much. Enjoy, and if you were insulted by the previous paragraph…stop reading my blog.
I am sitting at home, on the south side of a once-small Colorado town I used to hear crickets, but now there are sirens The dog snores, unbothered, and my wristwatch patiently counts seconds I no longer own I can see the faint glow, of a nightlight down the hall
I used to hear crickets, but now there are only sirens There is a coldness where a warm love used to lie, beside me, tucked away I can see the faint glow of a nightlight down the hall Time has taken the children from the rooms, but I keep them plugged in
There is a coldness, where a warm love used to lie And I feel it, tucking away from me, lonely and quiet Time has taken the children from the rooms, but I keep them plugged in I’ll never sleep the way I used to, when I knew we were all safe
And I feel it, over and over, love tucking away from me lonely and quiet The dog snores unbothered, and the wristwatch ticks away the seconds I no longer own I’ll never sleep the way I used to, when they were down the hall I am sitting, up in bed, once a home, on the lonely side of a once-small Colorado town.
tom-boy rough and tumble the feral ruler of broken-down neighborhoods in dying mining towns knew no gender just the horsepower of my skinned-kneed legs and the unfettered mane more wild adherent to herd than human girl or boy wind-tossed and unmanageable out in sunlit days with any able-bodied child my height who could keep up invent dragons and build castles in trees uncategorized, unencumbered by expectations of bows or army men dolls or trucks why not both? why not all? aren’t our hearts really just wildings? in the beginning we were all unfettered dragons, able-bodied castles nurturing friends and fauna in trees alike we were all ‘them’
Disappointed I can’t find an image of the scene when John Gavin shouts this line while fumbling with a live chicken and coming out of a tranquilized haze.Apparently, the internet DOES NOT have everything.
I’m not immune to the fact that this blog has tripped around in the dark a bit lately. Let’s be honest, all of us are probably tripping in the dark. We’re in unprecedented times, facing stresses and noise that we’ve never dealt with before. It’s easy, in the dissonance, to lose our path.
So for the next three to four months, the first week of the month, I’ll be getting organized and coming back to a series I ran a few years back called the Beautiful Writer’s Workshop. I’ll probably skip around a bit, everything from how to submit your work to how to organize your series. No, I’m not going to make you deconstruct your sentences into diagrams, circling your subject, double scoring your gerunds, slashing through your adverbs (or will I? Could be a fun practice in the lost art of sentence diagramming AND tortuous. I’m a girl who likes it a little rough).
For the love of all that is good and holy…
I’ll be re-blogging in line with issues I’m seeing my students face, and those I’m facing myself. For as many classes as I’ve taken on any number of writing related topics, I always seem to glean something new. Hopefully these little once-a-month writing lessons can help you too. If you have specific issue you’ve been fighting with, contact me and I’ll try to run a post about it.
That’s not to say I won’t occasionally throw in a “stop being assholes to each other” rant. I like to keep it exciting after all.
It’s been a while since we dabbled in the lighter word count and heavier hand of poetry so I thought…why not start there? Especially since this is the first week of National Poetry Month.
(Hold on to your asses, she’s about to ADULT over here!)
Poetry used to be the sole conveyer of great stories, epic tales, and the meat and potatoes of religious creed. The first believed poem, author unknown, was called The Epic of Gilgamesh. Besides this epic, there was Rig Vedas of Hinduism, and The Song of The Harper from Egypt. Centuries before we first heard a Greek throw down an ode to an urn, people were writing poems.
Poetry was borne in the heart of burgeoning cultures and empires. As we move west across the world, we have The Iliad, Beowulf, 154 shout outs to Will Shakespeare’s best girl(s) (and possibly boys?), and eventually, on to the new world with works like The Song of Hiawatha.
From these epic and structured beginnings, poetry has evolved and moved, like a river around obstacles, constant but ever-changing. One of the reasons I love poetry is its ability to capture the heartbeat of time-periods through the use of its language and form, as well as the ideas that it holds.
Poetry records history. From the simplest nursery rhymes (“Mary, Mary Quite Contrary” was actually based on Queen Mary I, aka Bloody Mary, who tortured and killed hundreds of protestants. Silver Bells and Cockle Shells aren’t perennials, they’re torture devices.) to Walt Whitman’s descriptions of the horror and decimation from America’s Civil War (“O Captain, My Captain” was written about the assassination of Lincoln just before the close of the ‘storm’ of war) poetry is a powerful conveyer of humankind’s journey through time.
Poetry connects. It’s visceral and often uncomfortable. It paints pictures with the deepest hues of language. Poetry is vital to song writing, memory retention, and a host of other deep-seated neural mechanisms humans use to survive. (the ABC song, “Thirty days hath September…”, “I before E except after C–and about a dozen other exceptions because the English language is a bastardized torture device for anyone learning it”)
So how do you write a poem?
Well, that’s the beautiful thing. We are no longer shackled to the 15 line iambic pentameter, nor are we beholden to ends that rhyme. Poetry can be written in just about any form you can conceive. You can write it, you can rap it (rap=rhythm and poetry), you can sing it, you can paint it across a street in bold letters. There are no rules but one.
Poetry should be true to your soul.
It should never be half-way. It should fling open the shutters of your close-held heart and expose it to the light. Poetry should reflect the thoughts and the feelings, the commiseration and worry, the anger and peace, the joy or the sadness that fills your head and your community. The simplicity of a world rarely observed in detail. The shadows of what lingers in the memory of scents and phrases. The ignored, buried, and burned histories of forgotten and enslaved peoples.
When I think of poetry, I think of catharsis and a means to work through big and hard emotions (a girl’s favorite kind?) I think of finding meaning and perspective, shrinking down the large imposing impossibilities to moments I can do something with. To feelings I can direct towards change. I think of telling the truth, especially when it’s hard. I think of informing the world of a voice and perspective that once was silenced.
To write a poem is to be truthful about what hurts most in that moment. And what survives through the grit of human spirit.
I’m sure you can guess this week’s exercise. Write some poetry. In any form you want. Send it to me, let me know if you want it to have a little spot here on The Beautiful Stuff, or if you rather just share it with another soul. I don’t have a preference for form or length. Just get to the darkness, poke around in there, tickle the tender underbelly of what drives your biggest emotions and tug it out into the light.
If you’re looking for a group to join and a community to support you through the month with a light-hearted challenge, check out Writing Heights Writers Association Poetry Challenge (30 prompts, 30 days, Discord server check in, and a month free membership with WHWA: email newsletter@writingheights.com for more info, it’s okay to get a late start)
I’m ten days late to Poetry Month. So, in penance, I’ll be posting poems every blog this month and a few more on my socials. Because if the world needs anything right now, It’s poetry.
Here’s an odd little collection. Read, sift through, taste them on your tongue, roll them over your neurons and let them…sink in.
Poem Speaks
She scribbled me down in the depths of anguish The sharp lines that cut through conventions of writing forms and cursive norms
uncaring of limits or margins for there were none to her suffering no lines could contain the horror that poured fresh blood on the page
She died on that page, over and over for nights on end awash in loneliness visions of failure longing for the final epilogue
and all I could do was trail behind the pen powerless to stop the deluge helpless to stop the stabbing wounds of ink and metal I was merely the blood spattter the aftermath
sometimes a river of words flooded over with her tears until she lay spent across the page a traveler unable to cross that river unable to battle the current but unwilling to stop fighting for safe shore
I loved her every word her every dark thought and the possession of her passion that overtook those nights
Because at least when the damaged words flowed and their messy calligraphy misspelled itself across the page there was breath to her
there was fire within and she burned bright
in the blackness of a cold world there was enough fodder of love to suffer to ache to ignite
The pause of me meant the death of her the blank page was a heart too weary to go on a silent pen was a life ended
I persisted in the days when I was her written world survived while she lived in all her aching splendor
When she lies still, pen laid to rest against desk I will only breathe if her words pass through new eyes, ride across new tongues I will be the fire she leaves behind.
S.E. Reichert
Tiny Speck Wanderer
Hey, tiny speck wanderer, no more than a bird’s heart beat A flutter of space dust, careening out of control headed into the black abyss along with all the other stardust heart beats.
What’s one head of a pin drumming on a thimble mean to a galaxy of celestial beings?
Don’t you ever feel small? No matter to your matter, at all?
The moon takes up a quarter’s space to those tiny bead eyes Jupiter—the mighty giant just a hole in the dark night’s skin, pricked by needle tip.
Yet there you spin, the world in orbit around you The cares of your heart the temperature of your feet the hunger or fullness weight or lightness in your belly. The love worn or tossed away, Suddenly the concern of the cosmos.
Tiny speck wanderer The universe beats for you. in the petite coils of your Underrepresented brain junk. A flutter of space dust— with universal ego.
S.E. Reichert
Untitled 1-24
I swing from suicide to bird song in the hair-breadth of a star
one shade dark now light but...
When I have purpose the pendulum halts the need for center a string of balance hangs my sanity and...
When unrequited and impossible love teases the fluttering edges of this tattered heart I forget that I want to jump off a bridge in the small moments of polite conversation so...
Even when its all just illusion the empty purpose, and impossibility of love the light from a star billions of years ago now dead and gone...
They are the precarious threads of hope from which I swing.
As we are in the last week of National Poetry month I have a couple to share from last week’s exercises before we get into some fun little distractions from your current pandemic confusion.
But first…some Verse…
LESSONS
The children must be taught
But why?
So they can “grow up”?
So they can feed this horrible and unequal shipwreck of a country?
This continuous machine that steals their joy
and forces them into tiny boxes of pre-approved paths?
Paths that continue to feed the privileged?
who ride, like great white kings, on the backs of former dreamers?
Dreamers forced to live on the crumbs of cake that fall
from their slovenly white jowls?
The children MUST be taught
A new lesson.
A new way…the way of their heart.
The way their soul already knows.
The way that shouts out,
“You don’t get to tell me what my potential is–
You don’t get to standardize my worth by tests and deficient wages.”
The lesson of straightening spines
To topple the oligarchy from their shoulders
and down into the mud, to take their turn in wallowing.
Lessons must be learned.
The children must be taught.
–J. McLaughlin (Fort Collins, CO)
And from Miss Elliana (past contributor) :
IMBALANCE
And so it is,
Not one damn word in my head,
While the world rolls and sways,
Constantly tipping the balance point
Now to humanity
Now to the hungry gnash of teeth.
And I can’t remember the last words I said to you.
I can’t remember if
I was human that night
Or gnashing.
I must have felt the full and oceanic spectrum
all the love
and the hate
desire
and regret
Heart and mind, a mirror of the worldly indecision.
I like to imagine I was kind.
Even though I’m well aware,
of the splendid mess I am
for that boy.
A stammering, uncontrolled fool.
But these are stammering, uncontrolled and
foolish times.
–Elliana Byrne (Boulder, CO)
Finally, because I cannot ask you to do something that I wouldn’t do myself I decided to experiment with storytelling/dialogue in poetry:
TRUTH
“The truth–“she breathed. “The truth is that love changes.
In ways we don’t expect when we first fall.
It grows and festers, or it cools and softens.
It recedes and fades.
Sometimes it aches,
like a bone that healed wrong.”
His thought crashed out loud.
Thick skinned rhino parting reeds.
“How did you love me?”
Heavy stillness settled
Hot, lazy, savanna swelter
hanging over, waterhole dried.
Air so thick, she could cut it
With the truth.
“The festering, aching way.”
And, since it’s still Poetry Month…here’s some ideas to squeeze in a few more exercises in the art for this last day of April!
You’re welcome.
Write about something that will always be out of reach (everything from the cookie jar to the corner office)
Write a poem where each line/sentence is about each day of a week (maybe last week, maybe an alternate universe week)
What does your favorite color taste like?
What it feels like when you don’t belong in a group of others. (do you want to belong or are you trying to stay an outcast? Play with the difference in those emotions.)
Start the first line of your poem with a word or phrase from a recent passing conversation between you and someone you don’t know. (it can be a simple, “how’s your day going?” from the clerk at the grocery check out line, or more intrusive like a “Have you found Jesus?” concern from a person on your front door step. Maybe it’s the “It’s called a blinker, jackass!” you hear from behind you in traffic (back in the day when we sat in traffic).
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” –William Butler Yeats
I cannot believe it’s taken me nearly all month to remember that it is, in fact, National Poetry Month. I think I may have skimmed over something in the deluge of news clips and overthought, under-edited articles that pervade my cyber space, but in a world where days blend together, I nearly missed it.
You know what coming next, don’t you?
Oh,I’m not being lazy! It’s good practice!
And its more a matter of economy–I’ve got end-of-school projects due and a Black Belt Progress check this week, and therefore, my plate is a little full. So this week your exercise is simple. Go outside, mask it up if you find yourself in a bustling park, of course, but if it’s a deserted early morn, breathe the un fettered air, allow a scrap of paper and pen to tag along with you.
Take ten minutes of just being aware of the moment. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? What do you smell? Use these observations and notice how they filter and affect the thoughts already on your mind. Have a quarrel with yourself and see what arguments emerge. What solutions? What epiphanies?
Then go find yourself a favorite place to sit and write me a poem.
I was going to give you some restrictions but I think we’ve all had enough of those. Any length, any form, rhyming or blatantly against, iambic pentameter–why the f%*k not? Limerick or Odyssey, dark or light, whatever is on the tip of your brain, no matter how sharp or dull.
Send them along, and let me know if you want me to include them in the weeks to come.
Sarah Reichert Author 