Tammy’s Lament

It’s Friday, time to post responses to the Big Tent Poetry prompt. The prompt was to write about icons, those larger-than-life personalities. As soon as I saw the examples of Barbie and Chatty Cathy though, I knew I just had to write about…

You don’t know me, very few do.
I was Barbie’s country cousin,
the one she didn’t talk about much,
the perennial girl next store.
She wore glittery evening gowns,
I wore sensible clothes.
Even my hair was drab.
No Ken waiting in the wings for me.
I spent Friday nights watching
my little sister Pepper.
Could life get any duller?
Barbie was the glamour girl. And me?
Simply “the doll you love to dress”.

Read more Big Tent Poetry poetic responses here.

Cold Season

Yesterday’s Poetic Asides prompt was to write a cold poem.

Is it feed a cold, starve a fever…
or feed a fever, starve a cold…
I wonder, as I take my hand
off the refrigerator handle
and reach for a Kleenex instead.

A Lune By Any Other Name

When Robert Lee Brewer proposed a lune challenge on Poetic Asides, I just had to jump at the chance. The lune is an “American haiku” and comes in two flavors: Kelly and Collum. More on the lune form can be found on my previous blog post La Lune or at Poetic Asides.

I entered three lunes in the challenge. This  one made the Top Ten list!

a lune by any
other name
haiku just the same

These are my other two:

long summer’s eve-
watching bats in flight until
darkness subsumes them

an interpretive dance-
tree branches sway in time
to fiddlers unseen

The winning lune is a Kelly, the other two Colloms. To read the lunes that made the Top Ten List, click here. To read all lunes submitted, check out the “Comments” under the original challenge.

The Life of a Birthday

Well, it only comes once a year, but today being my birthday, I’m going to make the most of it!

I was completely stymied by the Big Tent Poetry prompt at first. It asked us to identify something we admire from our favorite poem, and use this to write one of our own. The problem was this– how to select just one favorite, from all the poems I know and love. I thought of nursery rhymes, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rachel Field, Hilaire Belloc, John Ciardi, Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Mary Oliver, Lisel Mueller, Judith Viorst… well the list goes on and on. It would be like asking me to pick my favorite child! But then I decided, I only had to pick a favorite poem (or two).

I based mine on two poems in fact:

The Life of a Day, by Tom Hennen

and When I Am Asked, by Lisel Mueller

(Both poems are reprinted in  “Good Poems” by Garrison Keillor, and aired on The Writer’s Almanac.)

I combined the form of prose poetry with the examination of a day. Hennen writes about the meaning of a typical day, while Lisel Mueller goes back to the day her mother died to explain why she writes poetry. Add birthday to it, and I came up with this:

It dawns like any other day and why shouldn’t it. But still
it surprises me that the morning sky is a pale gray, almost
white, not oh, say magenta or chartreuse or tangerine
or something more festive. I listen to the click of the sprinklers
as they come on, one by one, and the neighbor’s dog
barking at regular intervals in his territorial way. The cool
morning breeze seeps in through my open window,bringing
with it just the merest hint of fall even though it is only
mid-summer, and I snuggle deeper under my covers. It is,
in fact, a day like any other of the thousands of days I have
lived, no more, no less. Looking out over the leafy branches
of the maple so near to my window that they almost brush it,
you’d never know that this day had special significance for me.

Read more poems written to this prompt at Big Tent Poetry.

Sudden Summer Squall

My latest haiku for the Caribbean Kigo Kukai: (The kigo word was “umbrella”.)

sudden summer squall–
my umbrella
safe at home

You can read the rest of the haiku entries here.

The Perfect Guglhupf

This Wednesday’s Poetic Asides prompt was to write an inverted pyramid poem. The idea is intriguing. In it, the most important information is packed in at the top, and then dwindles down in the fashion of an inverted pyramid, the idea being based on a journalistic concept. The idea is that if an editor needs to cut an article for space, he can slice cleanly from the bottom. I immediately thought of a recipe. All you really need to know are the essential ingredients, and you can take it from there.

The Perfect Guglhupf

The most important thing
is the flour and sugar.
Shortening and eggs
hold it all together.
A bit of leavening,
salt to taste,
the merest suggestion
of lemon peel.
Raisins, they’re optional.
Mix it, stir it,
put it in a pan
and bake until done.
Dust with confectioner’s sugar
and eat while still warm.

Paris

I know better than anyone that life isn’t a competition, and I don’t need contest wins or publications to validate me… BUT, it sure is nice to get a little recognition once in a while. So it was with great pleasure when I saw that my poem “Paris” made the Top 50 list, in the 2010 Poetic Asides Poem-a-Day Challenge.

Here then, is the poem reprinted:

Paris

We bow our heads
at la Tombe du Soldat Inconnu,
collect postcards at le Louvre
and stroll along la Rive Gauche
in the footsteps of Hemingway.
April, I say, isn’t the best time
to be in Paris,
as inconsistent skies
pelt rain on us one moment
and smile upon us
with all the good will
of a benevolent parent the next.
But Paris, he murmurs,
isn’t the worst place
to be in April.

Big Tent Poetry Reading

In all the years that I’ve lived in Portland, 19 to be exact, I had never visited the St. Johns Booksellers or even been to the St. Johns part of town before– at least until today. It was a Big Tent Poetry reading that drew me there. I had a lovely, if tortuously twisty and turny ride through Forest Park, to get there there, but it was worth it. It was fun to discover that not only is there an indie bookstore, but there was a Saturday Market going on as well, right next store. In fact, the poetry reading series is offered in partnership with the market.

Today’s reading featured four poets from Big Tent Poetry, one of my favorite online poetry websites. It was only recently that I discovered through the latest Voicecatcher newsletter, that Deb Scott, one of the three co-founders of Big Tent Poetry, lives right here in Portland. So of course that made this a must-see event for me. Joining Deb were Carolee Sherwood, another Big Tent co-founder, visiting from New York, and local poets Tiel Aisha Ansari and Dale Favier. The poetry was wonderful, the turnout great, and the venue was perfect. A morning of poetry– what better!

Subliminally Yours

It’s always fun when I can combine two prompts, and this time, I wasn’t even trying. This week’s Big Tent Poetry prompt was to write in code. I also wrote in conversation form again, which was the prompt from two weeks ago. Maybe it was my subconscious talking to me.

Hidden in plain sight within this poem is a 14 word subliminal message. See if you can figure it out, and then check here to see if you guessed right. Other responses to this prompt can be found on the Come One, Come All link for this week.

Do you always remember your dreams, you ask.

I will wake from sleep now and then, I say pensively,
with vague traces of last night’s dream on my mind.
When this happens, I always try to grasp at it
before it slips away, sometimes even writing it down.
You should try this the next time you wake up, I add.

But why? you wonder.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe you will get a great story idea
or two, or at least a peek into your subconscious mind.
Analyze this, I say. Last night I dreamed we were walking
in the Japanese garden, and you wanted to feed the koi,
but when we did, they began growing larger and larger
and swimming toward us. Just then, my alarm went off.
I woke to find my cats standing over me purring,
with an inexplicable desire for tuna fish.

Subliminally Yours Message

And the subliminal message…

Subliminally Yours

Do you always remember your dreams, you ask.

I will wake from sleep now and then, I say pensively,
with vague traces of last night’s dream on my mind.
When this happens, I always try to grasp at it
before it slips away, sometimes even writing it down.
You should try this the next time you wake up, I add.

But why? you wonder.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe you will get a great story idea
or two, or at least a peek into your subconscious mind.
Analyze this, I say. Last night I dreamed we were walking
in the Japanese garden, and you wanted to feed the koi,
but when we did, they began growing larger and larger
and swimming toward us. Just then, my alarm went off.
I woke to find my cats standing over me purring,
with an inexplicable desire for tuna fish.