Showing posts with label renga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label renga. Show all posts

Friday, August 28, 2015

Poetry Friday -- as the hummingbird sips the nectar


Flickr Creative Commons photo by Bill Gracey

Jan Burkins, Steve Peterson and I have collaborated on another renga. Our first renga (and notes about the form) are here. Here's our second renga:



as the hummingbird sips the nectar


I.
round moon not yet full
finds my cracker--full ‘til bitten
life full with roundness


sharp as a wheel of cheddar
smooth and creamy as brie


under the gnarled oak
an old couple tosses
dry crusts to the pigeons


we become what we take in
fresh foods, sour moods, vast ideas

II.
mountain peaks tower
above the endless plains
full -- sharp -- old -- vast -- inspiring


toward evening, golden sunlight
settled on her wrinkled face


inside she’s a girl
surprised by her reflection
in her dreams she runs


river carries silt downstream
building up the new island

III.
sweet alchemy --
orchard apples filled
by the light of a star


loose tooth lost with first bite
red orb of bittersweet


cold front passes through
scrubs away humidity
wren sings from the fence


once, he learned to see rainbows
in the oil on a street puddle


a skill important
for grownups who are often
too busy measuring


too concerned with to-do to
barter duty for beauty



When we chatted via conference call about the finished poem (on the afternoon before Steve's first day back), I loved what Jan said about the process, how it's like laying one stone out at a time, building a path as we walk forward.

As we talked about our inspirations for each of our stanzas, or the stories behind our words, it was amazing (again) to learn from where in our lives these words had come.

I was the one who divided the poem into sections this time. I was working (probably too left-brainedly) to find a flow of meaning throughout the whole poem. While I couldn't find it throughout the whole, I did find it in these sets. 

Steve gave us our title, and I think it's quite brilliant. 

This is what I'm learning from Steve and Jan as we write together -- how to string pearls.



Sylvia has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Poetry For Children.


Friday, July 24, 2015

Poetry Friday -- Renga With Friends



About a month ago, Steve Peterson (@insidethedog) invited me and Jan Burkins (@janmillburk) to try writing a renga with him. Renga is an ancient collaborative poetic form, and is actually where haiku was born!

Steve gave us these directions and resources:
Directions
  • 3 line haiku-like poem 
  • 2 longer lines (sort of like a tanka form when you put them together). Another person writes this. 
  • 2 lines are inspired by the haiku immediately above. 
  • then, 3-line haiku poem inspired by the 2 previous lines, 
  • and so on like a game of telephone until we reach 35 lines total.
And some resources

     a description of the form.
     some examples.
The order of play went Steve, me, Jan (repeat). Here's our first renga:




in the prairie dawn
a spider's web snares the sun  --
cricket rejoices


meadowlark joins the chorus
breeze bends ripening wheat heads


whose lanky bodies
bow, sun’s church--peace be with wheat
and also with corn


they gather on folding chairs,
jello melts while the preacher prays


white-robed acolytes
shoulders shaking with giggles
two clouds hide the sun


even the adolescent stalks are sober today
word of fire in the neighboring field


this dark sky --
thunderheads poke fingers
at a thirsty land


near the abandoned homestead
ditch lilies toss flaming heads


who called this place home
does the ground remember
stories brought to earth

a faded calendar tacked
to the wall above the stove


try to imagine
the layers of memories
beneath the dust
how much memory is imagination
how much dust is history


sun slants through wavy glass
in the stale air
motes rise to dance


down the road, far down the road
reverberations can be felt





After we came to the 35th line, we gathered via conference call from Mountain, Central, and Eastern time zones to discuss the process and the product.

Steve instigated this poem writing adventure because of a desire to try collaborative writing, and to practice the haiku and tanka forms, but he found himself meditating on Jan and me as he chose the words he thought would best fit with what we were trying to say.

For me, it was like trying to catch a tune and sing along.

Jan was continually looking for the meaning in each set of 5 lines alongside the meaning of the poem as a whole.

Our memories of church and our ideas of "prairie" were very different, but we realized that Rosenblatt's reader response theory was alive and well as we wrote together -- each of us as reader/writer could bring ourselves to the text and make our own meaning, independent of the two others.

For me, the prairie in the poem is the flat, dry landscape of Eastern Colorado, where I've spent this month with my mom. Wheat harvest has been in full swing, but no one is complaining about the rains that might have delayed some of the harvest -- they were good for the corn. Those white-robed acolytes are my childhood friend Barbie and me, trying to be solemn in our candle lighting duties, but invariably giggling all the way down to the altar and back. The end of the poem is woven with images of change, home, memory, and loss -- all of which have been bitter and sweet in this month of helping my mom transition from her home of 60 years to a new home in assisted living.

Jan and Steve found echoes of current events that I can see now, but that didn't occur to me as we wrote.

We have plans to play with revising this poem, and we are fifteen lines into another. It has been fabulous to take risks together, to watch the poem unfold, and to hear each other's actual voices over the phone after listening so closely to each other's writerly voices on the page. Thank you, Steve and Jan!

Steve's post about this adventure is here.

Jan's post about this adventure is here.

Margaret has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at Reflections on the Teche.