I thought for my Year in Review post, I’d take a look at the poetry posts that had the most views in 2016. While none of them went viral of course, I still wanted to revisit as a way of getting ready for my annual daily small stones in January, 2017.
So, here are 12 of my poems, revisited, that appeared here on Quillfyre in 2016:
Caroling
by Carol A. Stephen 
Perhaps I laugh a little louder
when I watch Carol Burnett
traipse down a staircase, shoulders broadened
by green velvet drapes as she mocks Scarlett O’Hara’s antebellum belle.
I might find myself mugging in my mirror,
making moues, tilting head,
ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille!
It’s what she said, as she sidled her Swanson flapper
down another flight of stairs.
But I never tie my hair up in bandanas like the 40s,
or slop around in workboots with a bucket
and a mop. And when her show’s over,
and it’s time for Carol to sing,
I can only listen; I can’t carry a tune. Ironic
when the name we share in French means joyous song.
2. NaPoWriMo 2016 Impromptu #6 Storm Sonnet
Here’s the prompt: #5: Write a sonnet in the modern key:
Line 1: narrate action, include at least two nouns
Line 2: ask a question without using “I”
Line 3: make a statement without saying “I”
Line 4: now say “I” in another statement
Line 5: use a fragment
Line 6: narrate another action, include one of the nouns from line 1
Line 7: ask a question using “I”
Line 8: use a fragment that
Line 9: spills into the next line
Line 10: now say “I” and include the other noun from line 1
Line 11: answer your first question
Line 12: make a statement that is in total opposition to line 3
Line 13: combine phrases from lines 5 and 8 here
Line 14: answer your second question
And my attempt:
Storm Sonnet
Wind howls through dim alleys—
What price the snows of early April?
No birds sing in this early spring storm.
I hear grey sadness in the voices of the wind.
A trick of the ear.
The alleys between these houses narrow to deadends.
Am I the only one to hear their music?
Their hollow echoes, their blank walls, not
even the mockery of graffiti–
I hear the wind in all its many voices.
The brave green shoots of budding plants lie dead with cold.
Outside my window, the robin’s cheerful song.
A trick echo glances off hollows in the walls.
And I am the only listener.
“What are the different ways we can translate poetry into music? What would music look like as a poem? Let’s find out.
Step One: Find a Source Text
Start by choosing a source text. I recommend working with an e-text from a site like Project Gutenberg, but you can go old school if you’re willing to put in the time. Choose a selection of this text to work with. A few chapters or 8-10,000 words should suffice.
Step Two: Excerpt All of the Words Starting with the letters A, B, C, D, E, F and G.
There are a number of tools available online that can help you with this task. Hop on over to Applied Poetics, then copy and paste your source text into the editor. Under the Oulipian menu, pick “Tautogram,” choose the letter “A” from the dropdown, and click “run” to condense your text to all of the words that start with A. Repeat for letters B, C, D, E, F and G to build your word bank.
Step Three: Craft a Poem
Using only the words from your word bank (those starting with the letters A, B, C, D, E, F and G), craft your poem.
Step Four: Translate the Words of Your Poem Into Notes
To follow this process step by step, go here to the FPR Impromptu #28
Title: The Waste Land http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1321/pg1321.txt
Author: T. S. Eliot, May, 1998 [Etext #1321], ast Updated: April 23, 2013
POEMS http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1567/pg1567.txt
by T. S. ELIOT New York Alfred A. Knopf 1920
My poem: followed by my composition. Since I am totally unfamiliar with the tool, the notes and the poem lines do not quite match. Understandable, perhaps, why the poem is a short one!
Bridge after Bridge, comes from Project Gutenberg, two of T.S. Eliot’s books: The Waste Land and Poems.
Bridge After Bridge
(Wikipedia)
Above Athens and at Alexandria
death arrives, burning bridge after bridge.
Fire flames bones, children crying, dogs bloody,
gashed deep from cruel and broken glass
bodies falling from above crowd gutters
blackened by fire. Fog filled eyes,
fixed expression,
exquisite fear clasped closer.
Carol A. Stephen
April 28, 2016
The musical version is here at Flat:
https://flat.io/score/57222e74877982bf07429213-bridge-after-bridge
or in the original post from April 2016: https://quillfyre.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/napowrimo-2016-fpr-28-bridge-after-bridge/
4. NaPoWriMo 2016 Impromptu # 7 Cento: Only About Light
Today’s prompt at Found Poetry Review comes from Simone Muench, who wrote a favourite of mine, a collection titled Wolf Centos. Please click on the link to access the full post, and for more information about Simone, as well as to view other poems answering the challenge today.
The prompt:
“The Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira created the cento “Anthology” (see below) using lines from his own poems, instead of employing the traditional method of cento-construction (in which you build a poem entirely out of lines from other people’s poems). Following his example, write a cento that is a self-portrait, or anthology of your life, utilizing lines and fragments from your own work.
Or, alternatively, create a “self-portrait” cento using lines and fragments from other people’s poems (the traditional method), or song lyrics, or prose (fiction and/or nonfiction)
*To see the basic stipulations for writing a traditional cento, see http://myenchiridion.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html
I decided to use my own poems as source material. To keep it simple, I chose only from poems written in 2016. My attempt is titled “Only About Light”
Only About Light
Sometimes I wake, not because there was music—
here the silence deafens as only silence can.
Suppose the world was only about light—
the ultra-sentient particles.
I convince myself each fear is a chimera
while we sleep the Earth rotates east
the song dog
lifts his muzzle to the wind
and desert dog song soars skyward in a moon moan
but he doesn’t understand the depth of sky.
Carol A. Stephen
April 7, 2016
*the phrase, song dog is quoted from Alice Notley’s Culture of One
My First Driving Lesson Was Almost My Last
by Carol A. Stephen
Sixteen, and legal, my dad agreed to teach me
Sunday morning early. My brother tagged along.
Safe enough, that large empty parking lot, plenty of
room for error.
I slid beneath the wheel of the Ford wagon, knees
not yet quivering, too new to know or fear horsepower.
Too new to scan the lot for lurking hazards, yet in the shade
a single parked car I didn’t see.
Give ‘er some gas, my father said. And I did.
To the floor. Never heard his voice crack before,
’til he hollered out brake— BRAKE!!! BRAKE!!!
On the third brake, I hit the gas again.
As we accelerated across the lot, one yellow car
loomed large beyond the windshield. Dad’s foot
came down heavy as an anchor as it found the right pedal.
We stopped, an inch shy of the yellow car, clearly marked POLICE.
6. Small Stones for January 2016 Week 1
Each January for the last several years, I have participated in one way or another with the Small Stones/River of Stones challenge. This year I have been struggling with inspiration as it always seems like the cold and the snow are uppermost in my mind as January begins, and as winter takes its firm hold. I was an April baby, and perhaps that is why over the years I have found the darker months of the year difficult. They’ve become a time of hibernation and a depressing season, as it is for many of us. This is perhaps why I have held off posting this year’s Small Stones.
As the days start lengthening though, I find myself striving to find other words to move away from the dead of winter. With mixed results. These are, as always, spontaneous writing, and so very much first drafts, potential discards or lines for mining later and carving into something else when the time comes. Here are the Stones for January 1st to 7th.
Small Stone for January 1, 2016
In the air, strains of Auld Lang Syne.
As images of foreign shores fill the screen
with wishes for the year, a bittersweet
memory of someone no longer here
to share the new lingers still.
Among bygones and shadows,
filtered images of yesterday
blur sepia. Another leaf
drops from the tree, buried
in the snowy pages of fallen years,
the new calendar yet blank of story.
Jan 2 2016
Last week the grass still spoke in summer dialect
today the world breathes cold and colder still
Neighbours call thanks over the road
for help with the daily task of digging out from
under winter’s weighted white
Jan. 3 2016
Sky and snow blur to one,
the sun hibernating this noon.
Over the river the greyness darkens
to promises of fresh white
and cotton wool dreams
Jan. 4 2016
Out from the shadows of the old year,
brilliance of a January day pretends
a warmth it doesn’t own, only the promises
we grasp as if it were the gold ring
we’ve searched for,
always another distance.
Carleton Place on the Mississippi
Rivers to cross,
crosses to carry,
we carry
hopes still wished for but
still
just a hairsbreadth more.
Jan. 5 2016
A weight descends out of darkness
muffling the music and I’ve stopped dancing,
stopped singing too, my voice
a silent croak as notes, no longer in my throat,
rise silently out of hearing.
It is not comfortable here.
Somewhere, as the year approached its close
inner strength died too, beneath the long dark hours.
I waver here between the pain of moving forward
and the pain of staying still.
Jan. 6 2016
Heard screams are terrifying, but those unheard
are more terrifying still
– from Odysseus Blinds Polyphemus, The Polyphemus Painter,
Dual Impressions, John Brantingham & Jeffrey Graessley
Unmoving here the silence deafens as only silence can,
yet inside my head, the sound of a voice,
terrifying in its screams.
What is there in the dead of winter that
turns bones chill? As if, like the bounty of summer,
the spirit succumbs to the first killing frost.
Perhaps a child born of spring wilts too
as winds turn bitter when the sun turns its colder face
and the sky bleeds white.
Jan. 7 2016
“The moth’s single thought is light”
– from Notes for a Small Pocket/Call and Response Lorna Crozier
Suppose the world was only about light—
Light as religion, light equals life,
Light running through each artery, every vein.
What, then, of winter, of the dark time, the night?
Would there be a small death each night, not sleep,
but death, and rebirth with the coming of each day?
With each turn of the Earth upon its axis,
each black face of Earth
held away from the Sun, every evening
a new and quiet grieving.
7. NaPoWriMo Day 5 A Three-Fer
Today I have a poem for each of three challenges, the NaPoWriMo.net, Poetry Super Highway, and the Impromptu #5 from Found Poetry Review.
At NaPoWriMo
The daily prompt challenges us to consult seed catalogues and seek out heirloom plants as inspiration for a poem today. I chose the suggested tomato plants, for the reason given: the names are so wonderful. Here is my poem, Heirloom:
My source is an Ontario location, in order to use plants that I could actually grow here in the Ottawa area http://www.terraedibles.ca/index.html
HEIRLOOM
Various heirloom tomato cultivars Wikipedia)
No one there is who does not love tomatoes
is what Frost should have said each spring, as gardeners
turn to catalogues and dream their August dreams.
No Belgian chocolate for me, instead an Amazon Chocolate,
full of flavour in its flattened oval, sliced on a plate
beside the yellow-red streaks of Allegheny Sunset.
Ghosts in the shadows, silver-sheened leaves
of this year’s prize Angoras garnish a summer salad:
yellow Apricots jostle Azoychkas and just ripe Banana Legs.
Believe It or Not, every one of them tomatoes.
Carol A. Stephen
April 5, 2016
(first line paraphrases Robert Frost’s Mending Wall)
At Poetry Super Highway, today’s prompt was a fun write, encouraging us to write a Creation Myth poem for a kitchen item. Here’s my attempt, a Creation Myth for Oatmeal.
CREATION MYTH: OATMEAL
In the beginning was the Flake,
flat, without colour. Flake needed substance,
to cling to its brothers, to form a greater whole.
Oatmeal directly from the packing. ( Wikipedia)
With the first rains from the heavens, each Flake knew joy.
Each Flake swelled into greatness as it welcomed
the worshipping moisture.
But the Flakes were not yet whole.
Their joy soon dimmed as they floated
without substance upon the waters.
Behold, the rain passed away and there came the sun.
And a second time each Flake swelled but
joy was elusive.
And the Flakes dreamed they must know water and warmth
together. They consulted Oracle who told them verily
to seek out the Lord High Bowl, that they must cluster there.
And the Flakes sought out Lord Bowl, and climbed inside
Bowl’s vessel. For the first seven days, they waited. The eighth day
the heavens opened and behold, there fell a sun shower.
Rain poured down into Bowl. Sun heated Bowl till it glowed.
And Flakes were transformed. On the ninth day Bowl beheld
Oatmeal and it was good!
Carol A. Stephen
April 5, 2016
Breakfast of raspberries, blueberries and oatmeal. (Wikipedia)
Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies. (Wikipedia)
Finally, the Found Poetry Review prompt, today from Sarah Blake, calls for a poem that follows the rhythm of a song.Found Poetry Review
At first, I was imagining I’d need a month to even start to tackle this one. Until I remembered the blues. It may be a bit of a shortcut, copout or cheat to go with that, since it is a rather simple form. But it’s what I went with and on a day when the thermometer has slipped well below zero (Celsius) the lyric is appropriate!
Centigrade (Celsius) and Fahrenheit thermometer scales (Wikipedia)
Weather Blues
Don’t want that chill wind hangin’ outside my door
Said I don’t want that chill wind hangin’ outside my door
Bringin’ me blue fingers like it done before
It brings me the shivers, it brings me cold feet
Yeah, it bring me the shivers, an’ it bring me cold feet
Cold bringin’ me down when the weather ain’t sweet
Don’t want that chill wind hangin’ round my door
No, I don’t want chill wind hangin’ round my door
If it ain’t good for springtime, don’t want it no more
Wind blows in the mornin’, and all afternoon
I said it blows in the mornin’, and all afternoon
It ain’t good for springtime, and it ain’t good for June
Fridays it blows in, blows all weekend too
yeah Fridays it blows in, blows all weekend too
Come Monday morning, man, colour me blue
Don’t want that chill wind hangin’ outside my door
Said I don’t want that chill wind hangin’ outside my door
Bringin’ me blue fingers like it done before
Carol A. Stephen
April 5, 2016
If I Leave
by Carol A. Stephen
If I had never slept in barns, nor called
a cellar home, might walls have held me
safe from tractors I could never drive?
If I could ride, would the furrows be straight,
narrow trenches filled with rain, the promise of each seed?
Yet, I’ve tilled myself a garden, made a home
for frogs to hide under inverted clay pots. They wait
for flies, their tongues curled, sticky with anticipation.
If I leave first, bury me with a memory of my garden:
a blackeyed susan, blue delphinium,
or an explorer rose, everywhere thorned and twisting.
Scatter the petals of spent blooms in the doorway,
crush them underfoot. Their scent will hold an answer
to when or why. Do not cry then. Walk the old growth forest,
scatter my memories among roots of its oldest tree.
Give what remains to soil and sky, and with each kneeling
do not speak of what’s gone but listen: in the movement of trees
a voice echoes each blade of grass. Your upturned palm
returns my energy to the universe.
IMAGE: “Flower Garden” by Gustav Klimt (1907).
The First Time I Read My Poems in a Hat
by Carol A. Stephen
at an open mic, I’m too terrified
to be myself, to stand in front, to speak
my own words to all those faces, other poets,
the ones who read their poems with aplomb.
I think of The Hat. It’s a beautiful hat:
swirled brown Swakara fur, pure white ostrich feather.
A frivolous hat, a dramatic hat,
an important kind of hat.
When I place it on my head, I become The Poet,
take on a new persona sporting a splendid plume.
I might be a musketeer, a courtier, grande dame,
I might be anyone but me.
No one sees the paper shake, nor hears
the tremor in my voice. What they see
isn’t really me. They see The Poet,
and it’s all about the poem, all about that hat.
10.NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 3 FPR Impromptu
For Day 3 on FPR, we have a prompt about Creative Staring from Nico Vassilakis.
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/impromptu-3-nico-vassilakis/ and a helpful interview with the poet, shared by James W. Moore, fellow challenge participant: http://bodyliterature.com/2014/02/24/what-is-vispo-an-interview-with-nico-vassilakis/
While I am not a follower of Vispo, in the spirit of community I decided to give this a go once, but I warn, I am not artistically inclined, so my poetry will always be through the written word. Here then, my attempt to portray the ocular auras that are the form my migraines take, and which have been visiting with the weather changes we’ve been having the last couple of weeks here in the Ottawa area:
Migraine Translations
example of zig-zag visual disturbance experienced as a migraine aura. (Wikipedia)
What Is Postmod ism?
Is the aim of mod aily life and of thought organic?
Does the passa be charted between
heterogen us languages
belong to a differ der of cognition?
Would it al synthesis?
What autiful?
What said to be art?
What do ck of reality signify,
free from na w historic interpretation?
How to mak isible
somethi ich cannot be seen?
What the the postmodern?
What pla oes it occupy
in vertig us questions
hurled e rules?
What spa ezanne?
What obj icasso,
image arration?
What upposition Duchamp?
What i stmodernism?
11.NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 10: Cracking the Spine
For today, I chose to do the prompt posted on napowrimo.net
Today’s prompt comes to us from Lillian Hallberg. She challenges us to write a “book spine” poem. This involves taking a look at your bookshelves, and writing down titles in order (or rearranging the titles) to create a poem. Some fun images of book spine poems can be found here. If you want to take things a step further, Lillian suggests gathering a list of titles from your shelves (every third or fifth book, perhaps, if you have a lot) and using the titles, as close to the originals as possible, to create a poem that is seeded throughout with your own lines, interjections, and thoughts. Happy writing!
I’d been working on a 10-word, 48-hour contest poem for the CV2 annual April event (sorry registration closed Apr. 4) and there was just not enough hours today to tackle an intricate prompt. This one was indeed, a change of pace. I simply scooped up an armful of poetry books and used those as my source. For the poem I selected about two thirds of the titles, and inserted four words (in parentheses) to round it out. The names of the poets appear below, in the order I used their titles.
Cracking the Spine
wood engraving (Wikipedia) spine and hip bones
Sailing the Forest
On Glassy Wings,
The Eternal Ones of Dream,
Coping with Emotions and Otters (play)
Hide & Seek.
Bye-and-Bye,
Stowaways (go)
Sprinting from the Graveyard.
Some bones and a story (make)
(A) Satisfying Clicking Sound.
Just Saying.
Carol A. Stephen
April 10, 2016
In order, titles from Ariel Gordon, Goran Simić, Robin Robertson, Anne Szumigalski, James Tate, Dina Del Bucchia, Susan Glickman, Charles Wright, Alice Major, Jason Guriel, Rae Armantrout
Small Stones for Jan. 29 through 31, 2016
Jan. 29 2016
I wake to the ubiquitous white blanket, white page, unmarred
by footprint or by word. My eyes crave a prism, the sparkle
of diamonds in sunlight, they’d even settle for sunbeams passing
through white sapphire, through crystal, rhinestone, even cut glass,
anything but this flat white under grey sky that greets
morning upon morning.
Embed from Getty Images
Jan. 30 2016
zodiac signs in a 16th-century woodcut ( Wikipedia)
Yesterday, a call-in show. Today, a blog post,
both focus energy on questions of astrology and how
some days our lives attune to messages from the stars, while
other times nothing goes according to the plan.
Both radio and blog remind me there is more to it
than merely sun sign. The planets, too, rise and recede,
and what moon sign held sway at the hour we arrived?
How much weight to give such influences, when
as a woman, I know the moon-tide’s cycles hold sway
just as the moon affects the high and low tides of the sea.
And I wonder how the elements of fire, water, earth and air
reveal themselves in the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Aries, the Ram ( Wikipedia)
How does the Ram, a creature of the earth, manifest itself
instead as Fire? How is the Water-bearer, Aquarius a being of Air?
Aquarius, the water-bearer (Wikipedia)
And how much weight does any of it have on the story of my life?
Jan. 31 2016
English: Animated image of Earth rotating. (Wikipedia)
While we sleep, the Earth rotates east
In January the obliquity of the ecliptic offers days
where darkness falls too soon. It’s an illusion that
days grow shorter as we age: in truth a century ago
Earth’s time to complete its daily rotation 1.7 milliseconds
shorter than today. And time still flies. Already,
I have entered February, working on the news for
the coming fortnight. Already, I have thought past
Valentine’s Day, contemplated the coming of March
and its changeability from lamb into lion or lion into lamb.
I am not wishing the days by, although I long for
the return of green. With it will come another birthday.
If I might wish for anything, it is to stop counting.
The time is short – geograph.org.uk – 695749 (Photo credit Keith Edkins: Wikipedia) http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/695749
CAS
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