Friday, February 23, 2024

Poetry Sisters Write Epistolary Poems

The challenge this month was to write an epistolary poem in the form of a love letter or Valentine. I missed our Zoom on Sunday, so I have no idea what approach my poetry peeps are taking. I hadn't given the topic of this one much thought until I sat down to write and decided to address some very sad news I received this week. 

This is my buddy Cooper. We rescued him about 6 weeks after our first rescue, Sydney, was put to sleep following a short and nasty battle with cancer. In just a few days we'll celebrate Cooper's 10th "Gotcha" Day. 

This is Cooper on February 26, 2014, his first day in his forever home.

This is Cooper enjoying a Pup Cup after a visit to the vet on Tuesday.

Here's my poem.

Love Letter to My Dying Dog

Dearest Cooper,

It's sad really
how often you're called by something 
other than your given name
  Stinky Breath
   Honey Bunny
    Butt Licker
     Goodyear
      Asshat
I hope you can forgive your father
that last one
Your penchant for eating couch cushions 
and stealing his sandwiches 
has made him perpetually grumpy

I adore you, you know
there was never any question of it
You wormed your way into my heart
the first time I laid eyes on you
You were a scrawny thing 
a counter surfer from day one
as life on the streets taught you to
grab any food you could find 
to survive

Survive you did 
but more than that 
you thrived
giving and receiving more love 
than we ever imagined
Your deafness was a hurdle
we learned to negotiate
but sometimes I think 
you were happy  
to tune out the world 
live in the silence of your head
you were never bothered by 
thunder or fireworks
like your predecessor was

You reluctantly tolerated the old girl
we rescued during COVID
showing first your anger and disdain
(you didn't sleep with me for weeks!)
until you adopted an air of 
casual indifference
It was clear, however
that you missed her 
once she was gone

Do you know that 
I'm marking time now?
That extra treats and kisses
signal the beginning 
of the end?
That your days have been numbered
by cancer's ugly return?
My heart longs for more
  More walks
   More hugs
    More time
But I also pray for less
  Less pain
   Less heartache
    Less loss

I know there will be tears
and sadness
I will embrace them 
while I see you through this
long goodbye
I will be by your side
to the very end
You'll never have to wonder
how I feel about you
my beautiful, sweet boy

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2024. All rights reserved.

You can find the poems shared by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

    Would you like to try the next challenge? In March, we’re writing in the form of the pantoum. The pantoum is a Malaysian verse form comprised of a series of quatrains, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the next. You can learn more about this form at The Philadelphia Writer's Workshop and Masterclass. Are you in? Good! You have a month to craft your creation and share it on March 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!  

    Please take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference. Happy poetry Friday, friends!  

    Friday, January 26, 2024

    Poetry Sisters Write Ekphrastic Poems

    Hello, and welcome to the first poetry sisters' exercise of 2024! This month the challenge was to write a poem to an image chosen from the work of piñata artist Roberto Benavidez. Sara sent us the link to his Hieronymus Bosch Piñatas as a starting point. There were so many to choose from! 

    Normally, when faced with a monthly challenge, I research the subject, the form, the poet, or whatever else might relate to the topic. During our Zoom session on Sunday, I went down the rabbit hole into researching The Garden of Earthly Delights, the triptych by Bosch that inspired some of Benavidez's pieces. While it was interesting, it didn't help my writing AT ALL. I suppose research is antithetical to the form of ekphrastic poetry. Laura suggested I look at the image and write about what I saw and felt. I brainstormed a number of ideas, and then, since I'd decided to write in the triolet form, I took my notes and wrote a draft of a poem.

    Here's the image that inspired my poem. 

    Triolet for Roberto's Bosch Cat

    orange tabby is on the prowl
    loses all time in a garden
    chasing fish and fowl
    orange tabby is on the prowl
    slinks past the rake and the trowel
    never asks for leave or pardon
    orange tabby is on the prowl
    loses all time in a garden

    Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2024. All rights reserved.

    You can read my Poetry Sisters' work at the links below. 

      Would you like to try the next challenge? In February, we’re writing Epistolary poems in the form of love letters or Valentines. Are you in? Good! You have a month to craft your creation and share it on February 23rd in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!  

      Please take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Susan Thomsen at Chicken Spaghetti. Happy poetry Friday, friends!  

      Friday, December 29, 2023

      Poetry Sisters Write Elfchen

      The challenge this month was to write an elfchen. An elfchen is described as a "German cinquain" poem. Instead of using syllables, this poem has 11 words, the lines having 1-2-3-4-1 words, respectively. Wikipedia calls this an elevenie (German Elfchen – Elf "eleven" and -chen as diminutive suffix to indicate diminutive size and endearment).

      I'll admit that I wasn't particularly thrilled with this challenge. Don't get me wrong, I think Adelaide Crapsey's cinquain poems are genius. I love her work so much that I even visited her grave when I stopped to visit the graves of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, NY (my hometown).
      In its simplest form, Crapsey's ciquain follows a syllabic pattern of 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 2. 

      However, the cinquain has long been used by (some) classroom teachers to "teach poetry" and in this form, it is most didactic and unpoetic. Yes, I said it. The Wikipedia entry on the elevenie reads like all those cinquain handouts I so loathe. This is the structure they recommend for this form.

      Row Words Content
      1 1 A thought, an object, a colour, a smell or the like
      2 2 What does the word from the first row do?
      3 3 Where or how is the word of row 1?
      4 4 What do you mean?
      5 1 Conclusion: What results from all this? What is the outcome?

      Here is the way the cinquain is taught in schools. The purpose is generally "to help learners stretch and develop their creative writing skills in a structured formula while reviewing parts of speech." Instead of syllables, it uses word count, so it looks just like the elevenie.
      Image from Free Cinquain Poem.

      Here is a cinquain of Crapsey's. Note that it follows none of the conventions described above.

      Niagara
      Seen on a Night in November

      How frail
      Above the bulk
      Of crashing water hangs,
      Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
      The moon.

      I really don't understand how this beautiful poetic form morphed into a tool for teaching parts of speech. Suffice it to say that in calling this poem a "German cinquain," I was not very excited and a bit nervous about this challenge. At first, I tried to tell a story with my poems, but that approach generally didn't work for me. I also played around with adding German words. I wrote a lot of crap, but I also wrote a few poems I'm relatively pleased with. I'm sharing three poems, and because I like to break the rules, one of them is a reverse elfchen (1-4-3-2-1). The first poem is about my dad.

      Gesundheit!
      Our answer
      to his loud
      full-bodied and thunderous
      sneezes

      Peace?
      Not yet.
      Some say never.
      Pray. Don't lose faith.
      Hope.

      Truths
      Climate change is real.
      Life is short.
      I love
      you.

      Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

      You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

        Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Michelle Kogan. Happy poetry Friday, friends!  

        Friday, November 24, 2023

        Poetry Sisters Write "In the Style Of" Valerie Worth

        The challenge this month was to write "in the style of" Valerie Worth. You can learn more about Valerie Worth and read some of her poems at Spotlight on NCTE Poets: Valerie Worth, with Lee Bennett Hopkins, a post by Renée M. LaTulippe at No Water River

        Worth's poems are meditations on the little things in world around us. Writing in free verse, her keen sense of observation and economy of language make everyday objects seem extraordinary.

        When William was in third grade (2009-2010) his teacher had the class copy and illustrate poems that "spoke" to them in their journals. This poem by Valerie Worth was one of his choices.

        In Paul Janeczko's book The Place My Words Are Looking For: What Poets Say About
        and Through Their Work
        , Worth had this to say about poetry.
        "One of poetry’s most wonderful features is that it can get beneath the surface of things and explore them not as mere objects but as remarkable phenomena with lively personalities of their own. Articles as coat hangers can take on unexpected dimensions within the realm of a poem; and if this can happen with coat hangers, then the world must be filled with other ‘ordinary’ subjects just waiting for poetry to come along and reveal their extraordinary selves."
        Worth's poems are magical, so emulating her was quite a challenge. I used the poem porches as my mentor text.
        attic

        in the attic
        time is fluid

        the air thick
        with memory

        trinkets and photos
        recall a lifetime

        a rocking horse sways
        and gathers dust 

        an old teddy bear
        welcomes a new friend

        holiday boxes wait
        expectant and hopeful

        Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

        You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

          Would you like to try the next challenge? In December we’re writing in the form of the elfchen, or German cinquain. You can learn about this form at German With Nicole.  Are you in? Good! We are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on December 29th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!  

          Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town. Happy poetry Friday, friends!  

          Wednesday, November 01, 2023

          A Cento Challenge

          This month Every Day Poems offered up a challenge to "craft a Cento from some of your favorite Every Day Poems lines." They also added this extension.

          For some extra fun, you’re invited to hand-letter your Cento poem, using a different style or color for each unique line you’ve gathered from another poet. Or, you could put each line on a different slip of paper and collage your poem together.

          Challenge accepted!

          Here is my untitled cento. (Click to enlarge.)


          It reads:
          the whole world’s chanting desire
          between stars or heartbeats
          beyond reach, beyond reckoning 
          and in slow-motion
          a tide, incoming: vast
          when pulled away, return always to me

          The lines in this cento come from the following poems:
          • Black Dirt by Helen Pruitt Wallace
          • Report [an excerpt] by Elizabeth C. Herron
          • Grendel In Dawn’s Early Light by Rick Maxson
          • Into the Woods by Laurie Klein
          • Into the Woods by Laurie Klein
          • Juliet’s Aubade by Sara Barkat

          Friday, October 27, 2023

          Poetry Sisters Write Bouts-rimés

          The challenge this month was to write in the form of bouts-rimés. In The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, Ron Padgett describes the form this way:

          A bouts-rimés poem is created by one person’s making up a list of rhymed words and giving it to another person, who in turn writes the lines that end with those rhymes, in the same order in which they were given.

          This post by Lady in Read Writes has an infographic on the history of the form. What must be mentioned is that the tradition is to write 14 rhymed lines in the form of a sonnet. 

          We didn't follow the rules for rhymed word generation exactly, but we came up with a creative variation. As we began to plan for our Sunday Zoom, we started putting pairs of rhymed words in the Slack channel for our October challenge. Mary Lee was gracious enough to create a Google doc that included an outline of different sonnet forms, along with our rhyming words. The word pairs were listed in the order they were submitted and labeled A-G. That means we had 28 words for 14 end rhymes. This meant that the sonnet form you chose largely dictated which worlds you were required to use. For example, Petrachan and Spenserian sonnets would use words only from lists A through E, while Shakespearean would use words from each list.

          I decided to try something different, so I went with the terza rima sonnet. This sonnet is named for the terza rima, which is a three-line stanza that uses a chain rhyme. The rhyme scheme of the terza rima sonnet is ABA BCB CDC DED with a final rhyming couplet that usually echoes the first rhyme: AA. The poem Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost is an example of this form. 

          Here are the words we suggested. The words I chose to use are in green. 

          A: profuse/abtruse
               chartreuse/truce

          B: incline/shine
               resign/supine

          C: various/gregarious
               hilarious/precarious

          D: ceasefire/quagmire
               higher/dryer

          E: transform/barnstorm
               uniform/conform

          F: humility/futility
               nobility, tranquility

          G: perturb/superb
               reverb, disturb

          I listed the end words first and then began to write. I did rearrange a few of the lines once I had a sense of where this might be going. I tried so hard to follow the rules, but I really wanted to replace the word hilarious with ridiculous because it makes more sense in the poem. Doing so would mean I'd FAILED to bend this form to my will and make my lines fit the prescribed end words, so I've left a less desirable option to stay within the bounds of the challenge. The misuse of hilarious notwithstanding, I'm pleased with the result.

          The World Abstruse

          The world amazes even though abstruse
          Give up on understanding just resign
          yourself to sing its praises most profuse

          Blue sky and clouds you ponder while supine
          as morning flocks sing most gregarious
          You rise to wander up the steep incline

          step lightly to the edge precarious
          Views sublime soon call you to move higher
          what vexed you once now seems hilarious 

          compared to all those praying for ceasefire
          What will it take to make hard hearts transform?
          To pull societies from the quagmire?

          You hope beyond all hope for peacea truce
          This world you love amazes while abstruse 

          Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

          You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

            Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month, we’re writing in the style of Valerie Worth. You can learn more about Valerie Worth and read some of her poems at Spotlight on NCTE Poets: Valerie Worth, with Lee Bennett Hopkins, a post by Renée M. LaTulippe at No Water River. Are you in? Good! We are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on November 24th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!  

            Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Carol Labuzzetta at The Apples in My Orchard. Happy poetry Friday, friends!  

            Friday, September 29, 2023

            Poetry Sisters Write Diminishing Verse

            The challenge this month was to write in the form of diminishing verse. You can learn more about this form at Writer's Digest. You can also find helpful information at Astra PoeticaWord Wool, and YeahWrite. Wikipedia calls these Pruning Poems. Basically, the last word in each line is reduced in diminishing (pruning) fashion, by removing the initial letter of the last word in the line without any other changes to spelling. One example might be trout/rout/out. 

            I'm grateful I didn't need to think about addressing the theme of transformation in my writing, because the form is transformational in itself. I really had no idea how to start this challenge, so I googled "3-letter words that start with a." I looked at that list and started adding letters to try and make longer words that shared letters. I did this for all 5 vowels (sorry y). When I found that difficult, I went to thefreedictionary.com and entered 3-letter words, like art, and selected "ends with." This got me a very long list of words. From playing around with this I generated a page of word lists.


            The problem with this approach was that it generated words that didn't seem to fit very well together. I also took some liberty with 3-letter words, including ack and ick. While all these sets of words rhymed, I had no idea how to make sense of them. When I began working on a poem in earnest, I tried to find a story to tell. Given that I find this form annoying and contrived, I'm pretty pleased with this little poem.

            Ode to the Carolina Wren

            Faithful companions a mated pair cleaves
            raises brood after brood that fledges and leaves
            here in the rundown farmhouse eaves

            Daily I hear the male whistle and scold
            his tweedle-tweedle-tweedle rings out in the cold
            the song of the wren never gets old

            Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2023. All rights reserved.

            Since I've been playing around with Canva, here's the photographic version of this poem.


            You can read the pieces written by my Poetry Sisters at the links below. 

              Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month, we’re writing in the form of bouts-rimé (pronounced Boo-ReeMay). Bouts-rimés "is a method of poetry composition where the author writes down the rhyming end words of each line first, and then fills in the rest of the poem. It is sometimes approached as a game, with one participant challenged to create coherent verse from absurdly incongruent end-words." You can learn more about this form at Bouts-Rimé: A Rhyming Word Game Popular During the Georgian Era. Are you in? Good! We are continuing with our 2023 theme of TRANSFORMATION. If you’re still game, you have a month to craft your creation and share it on October 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems!  

              Do take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Happy poetry Friday, friends!