PAD Day 23 Retro Bonus: More Heart

 Here's one I was working on yesterday and finished today, in repsonse to Write Better Poetry's "Heart" prompts. Yesterday I wrote and posted "Heart of the Museum," so today's poem is titled:

Museum of the Heart
 
Here is where it was made of gold,
And here, it was made of stone,
Here is where it was melted,
And here, lonely and alone.
 
Here is where it was lifted up,
And here is where it sank.
Here is where it was bleeding;
Here’s its bottom from which to thank.
 
Here, it was in the right place,
Here, it was struck with fear,
Here is where it would race,
And here it was held dear.
 
Here is where it was hardened,
Here is where it was stout,
Here is where it was followed,
And here it was poured out.
 
Here is where it was broken,
Here is where it was faint,
Here is where it was woken,
And here it was that of a saint.
 
Here its cockles were warmed,
Here it was worn on a sleeve,
Here it was crossed and hoped to die,
And in here it wished to believe.
 
Here is where it skipped a beat,
Here it was taken aback,
Here it was heavy, here it was light,
And here’s where it had the attack.
 

PAD Day 24: What Could Have Been

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a "maximum" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. "

PSH: "Write about options of any kind. To choose one leaves others behind. Personalize an option left behind and write from its perspective. The option might be relieved, excited it wasn’t chosen, or feel rejected." (Kathleen Hunkele Schardin)

So here is mine, using all three prompts. I picked my beginning line more or less at random: I have the Copper Canyon anthology A House Called Tomorrow, which is an excellent fifty-year retrospective of poets they have published. I  haven't got that far into it, but I skipped to the more recent poems in the back, found a poet whom I have read and like, and picked a line I liked from her poem without reading the whole poem first. I also decided to use her line as an epigram rather than a first line. As far as the "maximum" prompt goes, I just kind of worked the word into the poem rather than making it a major focus of the theme.

A Note from the Ph.D. You Never Got
 
[I]t’s a miracle to have a life. Any life at all.
                                                                —Ellen Bass, Indigo
 
Just wanted you to know I am alive and well,
mounted on the wall of a Rutgers professor
who heads the Psychology Department,
is widely published, and just went Emeritus.
 
I know sometimes you have regrets,
having dropped out after a year of grad school,
but it looks like you have done okay—
your writing, your government service,
a happy marriage, kids and grandkids.
 
Getting me would have taken maximum effort,
but maybe not for maximum return.
You should also know that if you went
down that path, you would have had
an affair in your 40s with a pretty young student
that would have ended your marriage, two sons
who never speak to you, and an accident
on Boylston Street in Boston that would have
left you walking with a cane.
 
And don’t think the Rutgers prof has no regrets—
but I’m not at liberty to discuss them.
 
So you don’t have me on your wall. Big deal.
Instead, there are pictures of your family
and your wife of fifty years.
 

PAD Day 23 Bonus: A Big Heart

 Here is my response to Write Better Poetry's prompt to write a poem with the title "Heart of the _______":

Heart of the Museum 

I remember being awestruck at eight,
walking through the Giant Heart,
100 times normal size, as if I were
a blood cell, passing through its chambers,
up, around, through and down,
to a natural bass, the original beat,
a deep thump of contracting muscles.
A marvelous construction of paper mâché,
chicken wire and wood, it’s now solid fiberglass,
and a fixture at the Franklin Institute
here in Philly for over 70 years,
literally a rite of passage for any schoolkid,
and countless adults too.
Millions of visitors have pumped through it,
and will continue to do so,
then circulate through the other exhibits,
and out the doors and into
the bloodstream of the world.

If you are a fan of the comedy series Abbott Elementary, set in a elementary school in Philadelphia, you may remember that in their Season 2 finale they took a school field trip to the Franklin Institute. The episode was shot on location (the first time they actually did that in the series), and you can see several areas and exhibits in that episode, including the Giant Heart. Here is a photo of it. (It will be closing on May 6 for six months of renovations.)

 

PAD Day 23: Dylan, Captain America, and Fighting Poets

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem with the title "Heart of the _______" or "______ of the Heart."

NPWM: "...  write a poem about, or involving, a superhero..."

PSH: "Write a poem that records a dialogue between two famous poets arguing a point of controversy. "

I combined prompts two and three to write a poem based on a lyric from what is probably my favorite Bob Dylan song, a fever dream of a fantasy narrative featuring a wide cast of characters, including two famous poets. (The superhero enters only in the last stanza. And admittedly, it gets a bit silly with a rather serious subject.)

Clash of the Poets
 
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn,
Everybody’s shouting
“Which side are you on?”
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower…
—Bob Dylan, Desolation Row
 
Part of the charm of that song
is the dizzying anachronisms
and unlikely intersections of characters
like Cinderella and Romeo.
Eliot and Pound weren’t on the Titanic,
and in fact didn’t meet until 1914.
What’s more, they were good friends—
Ezra helped Tom edit The Waste Land.
But they could have clashed over politics—
both were American ex-pats,
but Pound moved to Italy and embraced fascism.
Eliot, a bit of an antisemite himself,
nevertheless had no love for brownshirts,
and there might have laid the rub.
 
So for the sake of setting, leave them on the Titanic,
scrapping in the control room:
“I can’t believe you support Hitler!”
“Well, you don’t love the Jews any more than I do!”
“I won’t be a party to genocide!”
“Who cares? I never liked your poetry anyway!
‘Ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas’?
What does that even mean?”
“ Well, how about ‘petals on a wet black bough’? Seriously?”
 
And here Dylan could introduce another character:
Then in bounds Captain America,
He’s just polished up his shield,
And says to Pound, “I think you’re Red Skull,
You’d better yield….”

(I"ll circle back to do the "heart" prompt later.)

PAD Day 22: Grab the Popcorn

 Today's prompts:

WBP: Write an "earth" poem.

NPWM: "...write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. "

PSH: (from Tara Elliott)

1. Choose one from each column (A, B and C below). ...

If you’re daring, use a standard die to help you “roll” your selection.

A: Craft Skill Focus             
1. Allusion
2. Anaphora
3. Simile
4. Metaphor
5. Personifica.0tion
6. Assonance

B: Restrictions
1. One adjective/adverb only
2. No end-stopped lines
3. No articles (a, an, the)
4. No stanza breaks
5. One verb only
6. No alliteration

C: Must Contain
1. A color
2. A scent
3. “thirteen”
4. Sports team or sport
5. A reference to the body
6. The name of a famous poet

2. Set a timer for precisely eleven minutes. You can edit later, but the time constraint during the initial writing will increase your focus.
3. Write. While writing, do NOT edit yourself other than attempting to stay within the constraints you’ve already set. Write the entirety of the eleven minutes. Yes, even if you think you’re finished. Keep writing.
4. Edit your work.

I rolled a die and got 1, 2 and 6. That means I must employ allusions, have no end-stopped lines, and cite the name of a famous poet. I also have to work "earth" and an unlikely conflict into the poem if possible. So here's the result. I expected "Earth" to spawn a poem about conservation or climate change, but instead I ended up in a completely different direction, describing another existential threat, if only imagined. (A line from another poem I allude to is in italics.)

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
 
Spinning with Harryhausen precision, they land on 

the White House lawn, and in an admittedly defensive 

move, vaporize a company of soldiers, while 

scientists and generals try to figure them out, and 

someone’s girlfriend gets hysterical. It’s the same old 

story—the tactic of the exploding plane, the strategy

of the sinking boat—until we cobble together 

a new weapon that forces them to crash spectacularly 

into our monuments, leaving us to marvel at all 

the special effects, and wonder about Skyhook 

and Donald Keyhoe and Area 51, then wander off into 

another scenario, another poem inspired by bad sci-fi, like 

Raab and his giant crab monsters, the second half 

of the double feature, and maybe we can enjoy 

a little more popcorn before the next stanza.

PAD Day 21: Romance on a Boat

Today's prompts:
WBP: "For today's prompt, write a trope poem. For most people, tropes are common plot devices used in certain genres. In romance, for example, the "different worlds" trope brings together two characters from different walks of life and/or cultures...."
NPWM: "...write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color. "
PSH: "First, write a 17-syllable American sentence, as per Allen Ginsberg’s definition.... Then, write down each word of the sentence in order vertically, like an acrostic but with words instead of letters. They will become the first word in each line of a poem.... Extra credit! Add/layer another form on top of it, like a sonnet (if your American sentence is 14 words) or a golden shovel...." (Jim Karetnick)   

An "American Sentence" is simply like a one-line haiku, except it can be about any subject and should form a complete sentence. I already employed the methods of prompts two and three in my Day 14 poem, "Anaphoric One-Line Haiku on Mary Cassatt’s The Boating Party." I focused on the color blue (prevalent in the painting), and I wrote a series of one-line haiku to describe the painting. So I decided to pick the first line as my "American Sentence," even though it's debatable whether it's actually a complete sentence: "blue as the river, choppy on a bright spring day - mind your hat, Madam." It also happens to be exactly fourteen words, so I can take up the "extra credit" challenge and try to turn it into a sonnet. As to the first prompt, the poem itself will reveal the "trope."

Le Tour
 
Blue was her mood when she climbed on his boat,
as blue as April sky. Pierre cast off
the rope. She took ten francs from her blue coat.
 
“River’s not good today,” he said. It’s rough,
choppy.”
                        “I don’t care,” she said. “Please take me
on a city tour. The Seine, its bridges,
a glimpse of Notre Dame. I want to see
bright lights tonight, I want to see the pledges
spring has made with Paris.” So they sailed all
day. She said her name was Jeanne. She did not
mind he kept her company till night would fall.
 
“Your manner is refined,” he said. “Store-bought
hat, fur coat…. I’m a simple fisherman.
Madame, Je t'aime.” And then she touched his hand.

Obviously, I used the old romance novel trope of "lovers from different worlds." The story is inspired, again, by the Cassatt painting, but without the baby. (Maybe that came later.)

I did change "river" to "river's" and "Madam" to "Madame" for the acrostic words, but since those words were also originally mine, I guess that gives me license to do so. 

Also I paid service to the second prompt by mentioning the color blue (again) three times in the first three lines. I broke up the lines to set off the dialog for effect. I know the meter could use some tightening, but I'll work on that later. 

               

PAD Day 20: On Haiku, History, and Getting High

So I just thought of a new poetic form. In honor of today, I call it the "Four-Twenty." It's simply four lines that total twenty syllables. How many syllables are in each line is entirely up to you...man. The subject matter can be anything, although something appropriate to the day (a reference to mind-altering substances, some psychedelic imagery, etc.) would be cool.

Here's my example:

"Dispensary"? Wow.

We've come a long way

from Panama Red

in a nickel bag.

(For the record, I haven't partaken in many years - I'm just getting into the spirit of the day.)

Today's prompts:

WBP: Write a poem using at least three of the following words - bear, collar, flair, hear, praise, ramble.

NPWM: Write a poem that recounts a historical event. 

PSH: "The Prompt: Birds and Bees Are Better Than Us

The Form: Write three (3) haiku using this prompt."

I combined prompts one and three to create these haiku. Each one contains two words from the word bank:

praise the grizzly bear

with no tackle he swipes

salmon with one paw

collarless cat

rambles through my yard daily

hunting for lunch

radar-eared deer

have a flair for vigilance

and hear what we don't

For the "history" prompt, I'll tell a story I may have told before in poetic form. It's rather narrative (as have been a number of my poems this month - some of the prompts tend to lead one in that direction.) 

Spirit of Glassboro
 
I was sixteen, at a competition in Virginia
with my high school band, when we got the call:
Come back to New Jersey—Johnson and Kosygin
are having a summit in Glassboro, our home town.
We arrived the next day.
 
It was June of ‘67. The Six-Days War in the Mideast
was just winding down. We hustled off our buses,
all starched up in our uniforms, and got in formation
just in time to play from the parking lot
for the dignitaries rolling by in their black limousines.  
My bandmate said he thought he saw Kosygin wave.
 
The President and the Russian Premier met
at Hollybush, the historic home of the college president
on the state college campus, for three days,
talking about Vietnam, the Mideast,
weapons systems, and who knows what.
They came out to address us, the people crowded 

on the grounds, while news cameras and reporters
swarmed everywhere. We gave the two leaders

a warm reception, reflecting well on us folks
from the “sleepy little college town,”
as the press liked to describe us.
 
In the end, not much was really accomplished,

but the Cold War may have thawed just a little.
And no matter what it meant to the annals of history,
it meant something to me that I was there.