Sunday, April 7, 2024

The Return of Poetry Month: Lost in Westchester

Yesterday, at the Tarrytown Reservoir

April is, of course, Poetry Month -- a fact that should strike fear and wonder into the hearts of anyone reading this blog.

I am, of course, once again, following a random poetry prompt to write a poem each day in April 2024. Some of the poems will undoubtedly wind up here because I consider myself in the Prehistoric Man phase of my poetic path. My MacBook Air provides durable pigments, and this blog provides the walls of a cave that will go undiscovered for melleniums.

Yesterday, I sought inspiration at the Westchester Poetry Festival. My ticket claimed the festival would be held  at the Hudson Valley Writers Center at Philipse Manor Station in Sleepy Hollow. Which turned out to be deserted when I arrived. I didn't take this as a metaphor. I didn't take this as a practical joke or as a sign I was unwanted. No, I persisted.

A flyer at the haunted train station informed me that the festival was instead being held in Dobbs Ferry, a mere 6 miles away as the foreboding crow flies, but a 25-minute odyssey amid winding roads and long stop lights in weekend Westchester traffic.

I eventually arrived there. There, being The Masters School, a complex of buildings surrounding a crowded playing field, which was absurdly trafficked and crowded despite seemingly no athletic event in progress. Then again, perhaps it was track and field.

Still, I persisted. I found the festival, which looked like this from above:


I enjoyed myself There. I ate free cookies and brownies. The poets informed, provoked, and inspired me. Arriving back home, I prompted myself to create my own "writing prompt" poem. This:

A Dozen Poetry Prompts Inspired by a Visit to the Westchester Poetry Festival

 

1.        The Tony Soprano Rest Area on the New Jersey Parkway is under constant renovation. Is there a poem you are constantly revising? Why, and when do you think it will be finished?

2.        Consider the beauty of the bird-of-prey wingspan of the Tappan Zee Bridge. What work of architecture inspires you? Animate or personify it.

3.        Imagine you are lost in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Are you anxious, frustrated, reminded of a recurring nightmare? Write about your emotions.

4.        While driving and still lost, you approach a scenic waterfall and reservoir in Tarrytown. Do you pull over to admire it, perhaps take a photo? Why or why not?

5.        The site the festival isn’t clearly marked amid a complex of school buildings. You chance to see an old man in a skull cap with an oversized scarf draped around his shoulders walk out of one building, so you decide to enter where he exited. Describe someone you would suspect is leaving a poetry festival.

6.        The festival’s location is indeed a seemingly abandoned mansion. Write about a place or a person you think has been abandoned. What meaning does this place or person hold for you?

7.        Arrive at intermission. The MC advises that student poets have already read their works and the “Capital P” poets will soon read from their books, for sale at the table near the refreshments. Write about the difference between a poet and a Poet, or about an intermission in your life.

8.        Louise Gluck wrote a promotional blurb for one Poet’s book. What poet or Poet, living or dead, would you want to review your work? What do you hope he or she would write?

9.        Imagine that you are a Poet who teaches literature. Write a poem that weaves in lines or images from Shakespeare’s “King Lear” or Checkhov’s “Gooseberries.” Alternately, write a poem about Donald Trump without mentioning “Donald Trump.”

10.  One Poet reads a ghazal poem, (pronounced “ghuzzle” although you hear “huzzle”). You are meant to hear a repeating rhyme or phrase at the end of each of at least five couplets of the same length. Write a ghazal about love, human or divine.

11.  One Poet didn’t show up. Write about someone who didn’t show up for you. What was the cost to you, to them?

12.  One Poet was inspired by this fortune cookie: “We are made to persist. That is how we know who we are.” Open a fortune cookie. Write a poem.

 

First thing this morning, on the Seventh Day of Poetry Month, I received this prompt in email from Another Poet (say hi to Dimitri):


I promptly scratched this into the wall of my virtual cave:

Lost in Dobbs Ferry,

where Westchester poets hide.

I seek to destroy.


Tuesday, March 19, 2024

3 Poems, With Thanks to Dimitri Reyes


I love following prompts for inspiration to write poems. A poet I follow, Dimitri Reyes, offers a prompt every Sunday on Patreon, and the virtual me recently attended one of his (highly recommended) Saturday workshops.

"Write a poem about a bird," Dimitri said one recent Sunday, which prompted a haiku about the keepsake pictured above. It serves as a memento of my late uncle, a priest. The cardinal is a bird of remembrance, a sign that those who have passed are with us in spirit.

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Haiku in My Living Room


Pray to my uncle,
Now a stained-glass cardinal.
Church, a bamboo cage.

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"Write about a favorite TV show," Dimitri suggested on another Sunday. So I flew back in time to write about a favorite episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," from the first "Star Trek" series, a guilty Thursday night pleasure for Dad and me when I was young.

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Tomorrow Is Yesterday


It’s a Thursday night in March 2024,
And I have conjured my father in this poem.

Dad is a thousand miles away from me
In the same TV room in New Jersey.

He has boldly returned from the dead,
And we are watching “Star Trek” together.

Dad loves to pretend he’s Captain Kirk.
I love to pretend Captain Kirk is my Dad.

Suddenly, on the fluorescent screen before us,
Multicolored lights begin to flash. Sirens sound.

Dad holds tight to the arms of his chair,
Rocking side to side in an exaggerated motion.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise surrounds us.
We slingshot around the sun and land back in our TV room.

It’s a Thursday night in January 1967,
The day 2 feet of snow fell in Chicago.

My father sits in his easy chair, 57 years ago,
775 miles away from the storm.

He is still a thousand miles away
From the boy nestled on the room’s orange couch.

I join my former self there. I place a protective arm
That envelops my small body. I whisper in my ear.

“It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,”
I say over and over again.

Soon, a tractor beam surrounds me.
Its light absorbs me.

My grasp on myself dissolves,
As credits begin to roll.

An otherworldly vessel -- this poem --
Takes me home, this image implanted in my brain:

Dad, like Captain Kirk, at the conn,
Exploring strange new worlds,

Changing my future forever.

---------

During Dimitri's Saturday workshop, we talked about our weaknesses as writers. I thought about how -- with the ability to try anything, accomplish anything, create or destroy anything -- I so often fall short of my ambitions. "On a blank page, I can do anything," I often think, with a boldness that rarely surfaces in my work. So, when prompted, I became a hollow men in 11 lines, and even ended the poem, with apologies to T.S. Eliot, with a whimper.

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About Me


Behold the hollow man.
Behold the writer without a soul.
Behold my face,

The lines that formed and hardened
When my brow furrowed in suppression,
When I pursed my lips and kept silent.

Hear the poems I never wrote.
Imagine images I dared not share.
Watch the ghost of me dissolve.

As I disappear,
without a whimper.


Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Ruthlessly Pruning My First Sonnet


One interesting assignment in a recent poetry class was to take a poem I've written before and pare it down by focusing on the economy of language.

I'm all for economy of language. As a journalist and editor in my past life, I let hardly any adjective or adverb survive.

But life has changed. At recent readings, I've been captivated by the performance aspect of poetry, less so with classical poetic form.

So I took this opportunity to take the first sonnet I ever wrote... for a girl... in college... when I thought I was so smart... and ruthlessly prune it to reflect my current life... for anyone who might care... right here... when I simply crave relevance and connection.

This is...

Sonnet 1

There's something in the air, or so they say. 

It's certainly not magic or the heat. 

It's just the moon, white-full and young -- the way, 

like water, people splash and spill beneath. 

 

And you and I remind me of the tides. 

We hate and love; we rise and fall. It scares 

me that I don't know why or that I find 

no fault in us, just something in the air. 

 

So still above us rests the moon, content 

and seemingly unmoved. It doesn't hate 

or love; it doesn't care -- without relent, 

without a passing judgment of our fate. 

 

The moonlight falls like smoke between the mist. 

What fools we are compared to such as this. 


---------

And this is...

Sonnet Unbound

You and I are tides 

under a faithless light. 

 

We rise and fall, 

splash and spill. 

 

Helpless, 

in the mist. 

 

Reckless, 

in our love and hate. 

 

The moon, 

relentless and immutable, 

 

casts indifferent shadows 

on our foolish fate. 

 

 

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Poem: 'Ja Cie Kocham'

Mary Baron, 1897-1974

Ja Cie Kocham

When I was a boy,
JFK was president in Washington, DC,
And all the words were Polish in Garfield, New Jersey.

All the words were Polish
As I held my grandmother’s sandpaper hand,
And we walked to Sunday Mass at St. Stan’s.

All the prayers were Polish.
All greetings were Polish on the east side of Lanza Avenue.
Everyone around us, an immigrant.

Returning from church with Babci,
We stop to pick a chicken to slaughter.
She haggles with the butcher in Polish.

At dinner, I devour tender slivers of the chosen chicken,
Mixed in a soup with chunks of rice,
As pots of boiled cabbage simmer on her oven top.

I catch her eye in the changing colors of the kitchen window:
A flickering glow from the outline of a neon bottle
Above the door of the neighborhood liquor store.

Babci knows me, although we don’t speak the same language.
She knows I hate the smell of cabbage.
She knows I won’t, I can’t, complain.

English words were never spoken in Babci’s house.
English words were elitist and foreign.
They confused and intimidated her.

Her child, my mother, spoke English rebelliously when she was young,
Loving all the English words she needed for survival,
Instilling that love in me.

Now I am my mother’s keeeper.
We have both grown old.
My grandmother died long ago.

I sometimes catch Babci’s daughter
staring at ghosts outside her kitchen window.
So I whisper in her ear, although I know she can’t hear me.

I whisper the only three words I remember in Polish.

Friday, February 9, 2024

Thank Yous From Newlyweds to My Grandmother (an unrhymed sonnet)

Mary and Jimmy, wearing a white tux.

He has giant hands; she, a slender waist.


Pat and Bill sincerely appreciate

their world in color, freed from black and white.


Rosalie and Rudy peek playfully,

retreating to their honeymoon cabin.

 
Mary and Hugo, dancing center stage,

hands tightly clasped, casting nervous smiles.



Norma and Emil, wearing Clark Kent glasses.

She has dangerous beauty, kryptonite.


Dolores and Libbie’s getaway car.

She stole his heart; he has a dark secret.

Florence and Uncle Charlie, now both dead.
When my aunt smiled, she made the bright world dim.