Socrates insisted that we define our terms before using them - Michael R Burch

The rhymes and rhythms are my wet paint - John Whitworth


1. Define a term.

2. "Where the house is cold.." - The Examiners, John Whitworth. Reminded me of Tagore's poem Where the mind is without fear. What is your imaginary 'Where'?

3. Was Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle after Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?

Translate

All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids

Still Life Paintings

Joris Hoefnagel

The collection of life in these paintings in inspiring.

Botanical paintings

Dictionary

General purpose - suitable for two or more

Geophone  - vibrations through rock?

Write a Georgic like  Virgil

Garish

I learnt how to spell garish correctly.
My friend sent along this oil paintings link.
What goes on in the mind of the artist when the first stroke or paint is applied onto the canvas.

A swath of paint 
Is it like a newline in poetry?
A breath that sustains life

Freehand

       


Drawdrawdraw
1. Unexpected detail .  Write complementary sections of a poem that bring out synergy by a tug-of-war.
2. Color accent. Let a section of a poem do double duty extending to another poem.

Lonely Planet's Best Ever Photography Tricks

                                                      
Lessons from  Lonely Planet's Best Ever Photography Tricks
1. A foreground and background to your poem
2. Transforming Power of Light. How does your poem change by day and by night?
3. Is your poem ever at crossroads?
4. Your Poem in Raw mode
5. Critique your poems objectively.
6. Adjusting exposure of your poem
7. Bracketing in Poetry
8. What is the flash for your poem?
9. What is the red-eye of your poem? How to reduce it.
10. What is your poem's blur
11.Does rule-of-thirds apply to you poem?

Epiphyte poem

While reading about Epiphytes in Mother of God, I wondered how an epiphyte poem would look.

Would it be like a beet ?
Coloring everything in its way

Can two poems mingle
Or are they better on their own.

For an Epiphytic poem to encroach
the roots of the other poem,
how do we recognize the root of a poem?

Can a poem be Grafting onto another?

Exercise:
1. Write an Epiphytic poem

Poetry lessons from Excel

1.  Flash fill
Excel is smart enough to recognize the pattens in columns and fill them in the remaining columns.
Your poems have a pattern. Tease it out.

2.  Daffodils by Wordsworth happens to be my introduction to the word pensive. Tabulate the literary ironies in your poetic life.

Plant Therapy

This dainty plant on the pedestal is so relaxing. It is in a tea cup style container. the tiny container simplifies the the image of the plant and exalts the leaves.

On poetry

Nine battlefields

Ode to Percy and others

Dog Songs by Mary Oliver

If you have read poems by Mary Oliver then Percy is not new to you. 

Oliver's poem formats inspire. Continuing the tradition is For I will consider my dog Percy. 

Palaver from Her Grave.

Exercise: Consider your lost loved one in the 'For' format.

When poems collide

Having had enough reading for the day, I went into a thought sleep of what if poems collided. Pick two poems and use the words of the two and see what happens

The power of adjective

1. Wax candle stays with you long after you read the following poem. The next time you read of a candle (flame), you are sure to think of this 'wax candle'.

Virgin and Child in Quentin Masys poem by Jaroslaw.

To get your creative juices flowing, look out for adjectives that can be added into any drab piece of reading to make it  unique and memorable.
Wax candle would strike redundant at first but now since we have the Flameless candle , its a point in time from where man has learnt to seperate the light and warmth from the flame.

2. I recall reading about Archimedes death recently in The Calculus diaries  that he was frought in geometry while the death not knocked on his door but really barged in. This poem To the Germans with the reference to adder nests in the marble of the house, through its plunge in image takes the mind along the process of dislocating the floor reflecting the disorbitation of the guy who could move the earth from a firm spot.

Clive James poems

Taw in the memory game in Stagedoor Rocket science

Poems with pictures
Whitman and moth
Shark

Exercises:
1. Write a poem with strong first, second, third lines - Nefertiti in the Flak tower
2. What is poetry to you? for e.g Poetry as Numismatics. In this poem, the poet compares the process of writing poetry to making coins out of Planchet
3. A petrels fast movement is likened to an agile dancer in Against gregariousness.

 The movement of spreading out your wings or limbs does look similar like skydiving.

Anthology

Fossil of race.
A fossil is
a diary of times past
Bones are remains, the essence
that time leaves for later

Eggheads
The poem feel likes  the poet is talking about himself when he is so acquainted with the ways of eggheads at the end of first para.
I take your T-short to bed again starts in one place and ends in another
bowl of foreign coins - chokecherry heart
Mascon
Epithalamium

In every myth theres a secret. Something to think about when you read mythology.

Exercise: Wrte an outline of your memoir
outline for my memoir - poets note

Exercise:
The shape of pouring soy milk
Write of arrangement of nature - transitory, repeatable.

Writers in debt

 Elegy Owed by Bob Hicok

In Pilgrimage, the poet says
" I put birds
in mos poems and rivers, put rivers
in most birds and thinking, put the dead
in many sentences..."

Yesterday lunch time, I saw a not so humpty dumpty egg fallen on the tar, broken a bit. There was something inside. I went in to get a paper to lift it onto. My husband looked at it and concluded that the little  bird inside was dead.

In 'Soundscape', the poet asks
".. wondered why we call it
playing catch and not playing throw"
I think I know the answer for this one. I was teaching my kid to play ball. In the rhythm of throwing and catching it was hard to tell whose action I was shouting out, mine or hers. my throw is for her to catch. It is easier for kids to catch, than throw at first. From the kids point of view, its always a catch game. And if they miss, like one kid put it, you missed (you missed throwing the ball in such a way that it could be caught).

In 'One of those things we say', the poet says
"breathe and throw a party for the house when the mortgage
has lost its teeth."
What a time to look forward to.

In The Missing,
" a different girl with her own
missing eyes, her own beetle
in her mouth. ..."
With 'her own', spilling from the previous line, the poem gets surreal, presents a world to each person, living and dead, a world just and unjust.

In 'Elegy to unnamed sources'
"I've tasted your ashes twice, once today,
once tomorrow"
Visceral.

The abundance of baskin robbins scoop incites austerity.
In 'Very small bible' Jesus with amnesia walks around the dead.
The order of things is a nice swap poem.

Hyacinth cookie in Speaking American

Exercise: In Sunny, infinte chance of rain, the poet uses the happy dancing couple on wedding cake as the stage for the  real life events. Poignant. Look if any of your situations can use metaphors to better reflect the happening.

Cards fixed to spokes in Moving day. Enhanced bicycle. The only decorations that I can think of bicycles in India - beads on spokes, pom poms. Watch the sound made by clipped cards on bicycles on youtube.

I thought Making it in poetry would be like How to succeed in Po Biz.

definition

Grandma we are poets

Pyjama strings vs Book mark

Tug of war poetry - Me, myself and Irene?
Telegram poem - Buffalo war

As possible as yeast - first line of poem 'i am not done yet'. This poem compares with Emily D's work.

Can you imagine Luiclle's two headed woman? Will two headed shark give you a clue?

Confession. Conclude something in each stanza, let your last stanza be the collection of the above conclusions.

Sorrow song. Duty of a poet. Be the hundred voices.


Grange hall  in White America

Pomo Shasta Esalen
History as baby


Her endings
1. For the mute
'too many languages
for one mortal tongue'
2. If our granchild be a girl
'the feast of women,
the feeding and
being fed'


I knew of a couple of famous poems by Lucille Clifton but never felt pushed to explore her work further. Looking at this collection, I gave up even before trying by the enormity of the book. But after being lured into other collections, I have realised how an authors whole body of work speaks in a definite voice. With most poets, we need guides. Not with Lucille Clifton, atleast to enjoy it in first reading. Direct to reader poetry. 
The verse is so light (all simple worlds) that its hard to believe that one can write on weighty issues and still write on/from dreams, poetry for relatives and a letter and followups to Superman - not in the tone of 'Rescue me'. She taunts the forces be to topple her like those dolls that will never touch face with ground. 
Repetition used to good effect of gaining familiarty and belongingness.

A title begins with ellipsis leading to God.

I am about to attend a class on how o write something special for your family.
It must refer to On birth of bomani and salt.

Poetry exercise: As in the salt poem, can you think of a same thing that is different to all.