#enlargethepicture

Photo is not mine but comes from the CBC news story linked below.

#enlargethepicture

(Twenty Facebook Statuses)

1.      You need to know

2.      The past is just a story

3.      #enlargethepicture

4.      Open to anyone who wants to enter

5.      A woman’s body is not dangerous

6.      #feelconnected

7.      At the school, buns are rising

8.      #gowiththeflow

9.      The boys are lined up

10.  Jelly doughnut dimpled down the middle

11.  One share, 9 people like this

12.  A woman’s body will not make you do stupid things

13.  That black you see is your shadow

14.  What does this mean?

15.  The answer is honest, candid, resonates

16.  #feelssoright

17.  If you do stupid things

18.  #twelvesecondslater

19.  it is because you choose to do stupid things

20.  Write the next chapter 

.

The idea for the poem comes from “20 Imaginary Facebook Statuses” by Natasha Tiniacos. Click here to learn more about her.

My poem is composed of actual Facebook statuses posted by friends and acquaintances, pulled from my account on May 19, 2015 -- just an arrangement I put together.

The assignment this week is to write a political poem in a style I haven't used before.  Here I understand political to mean taking a stand. I chose gender politics, the stereotypes and biases which fill our world. 

In particular, I am interested in and annoyed by the fact that a 

young woman was disciplined in her high school recently, for

coming to class wearing a sundress with her bra straps showing.

She was accused of distracting the male students and of being an 

enticement to bad behaviour. Click here for link to CBC story.

Aren't young men and all men responsible for their own choices of 

behaviour? Aren't we all, each one of us?

I apologize for the uneven spacing of the previous lines. Blogger is misbehaving.

Revision of Yesterday's Poem

Spring                     

This is spring – the wooing

of sunlight and soil.

Its warm breezes

coax crocuses and squills,

unwrap pungent earth, wake up

the bees.

Now winter has left us, gone 

the snow,

shards of ice,

its relentless 

gales.

Winter teaches us to love

the innumerable greens,

the fertility of melt,

and the return of the robins,

as they stamp,

heads canted

listen for worms.

This is the revision of a poem, using a turn at the line "Winter teaches us to love." What do you think?  Is it better than the version from yesterday, or worse?  I will continue to look at it, to see where I can improve the writing.

Spring -- Yes, Another Poem About Spring

Spring                                

This is spring – the wooing

of sunlight and soil,

now winter has left us, gone with the snow, shards

of ice; its relentless gales

turned to warm breezes

coax crocuses and squills,

unwrap pungent earth, wake up

the bees.

This is the damp season.

Learn to embrace it.

Spring teaches us to love

the innumerable greens,

the fertility of melt,

and the return of the robins,

as they stamp,

heads canted

listen for worms.

Last Sunday, was the first day we had no gritty snow remaining in our yard.  In Eastern Canada, the winter has been harsh this year, so thoughts of spring are an obsession for me. This poem moves from beginnings of spring still attached to winter, turns on the couplet, then falls joyfully into full spring.

This week, the online course I am following is about turns in a poem.  

For example, sonnets have turns.  An argument is implied and developed; the eighth line comes through to the idea of "maybe" and right after, turns the argument in a different direction.  

A second kind of turn happens not as an argument in a poem but at the line end.  If the syntax doesn't naturally pause at the turn, it is an enjambment. We are sucked into the next line by our curiosity about where the syntax is going to go because it's open, it's broken, it's enjambed. 

There's another turn that can be a kind of conflation of a perceptual and a conceptual turn. Within the poem, there can be a complete reversal of the perceptual scenario. And there can be a conceptual reversal, this turn from talking about a subject to talking about how we can talk about the subject, which is in words -- that miracle that there's a possibility of putting what we feel and what we perceive into words, that we have faith that our words will offer up experience to someone else. 

There are turns that make you feel great to be reading a poem, when you end up in a place that you didn't expect at all. That's one of the exciting things about poetry.

The idea for the poem, I owe to Laura Lush’s poem “Winter” from The First Day of Winter,

(Rondale Press, 1997.) To  read the poem "Winter" and to learn more about Laura Lush, click on this link.

The Edge of Dreams

The Edge of Dreams

Words             g

                        n                                              at the edge of DREAMS

                        a

                        w

t e a s e                                    t a u n t

catch me if you can

wake & wait

                        yearn

                                    for those

                                                                        elusive lines

RUSH      of

                        t

                         u

                          m

                           b

                            l

                             e

                              d                            thoughts

sudden                        s  c  r  a  m  b  l  e                       to spit words                                    OUT

to scribble words

                        o

                        w

                        n   
      

spill the

                                     R  i   P  p  L e  S                     of                                 SONG

In lesson three of my online writing course, one assignment is to write a poem using the whole page. I must think about how to tap the page's white space and resources to surprise the reader with expressive moments, using gutters, margins, headers, footers, fonts, etc., without taking up space merely to use space.

This poem "The Edge of Dreams" is loosely based on an excerpt from "Writing Poetry," a poem I wrote in 2011, published in The Calling, A Collection of New Canadian Poetry.

Spring, a Poem

Spring

Snow pulls your cedar fence apart, pushes it slant.

Crossbars slump into symbols for “less than.”

Winter loosens its hold, sinks into flood, rushes

the downward slope to the river.

A red ribbon rides the melt, dangles on the lip

of the storm drain, bright floss tangled in a gritty grill.

You wait weeks for the slow dissolve of winter,

to discover your yard, wounded.

Then, one morning, above the crocus

and compost, this burst of russet

on a damp grey limb.

A robin sings.

Last week, I posted six objective observations from my neighbourhood, as part of a course I am following. This week, the assignment is to use those observations as the basis for a poem. The poem should also make use of sonic word associations and utilize differing line lengths to create pauses at expressive moments.

It is helpful to begin with a bit of language that holds interest, such as my “slow dissolve of winter” and from that create a word cloud of sonic associations. 

The word “dissolve” produced a word cloud of solvent, ventilation, discuss, discover, concussive, dishevel, solution, ablution, sheen, blue.

The word “winter” gave me a word cloud of winner, nerd, twin, tern, turn, winsome, win some, terrify, wonder, wound her, wound.

I used the words “discover” and “wound”  in my poem because they added sonic echo and because they suited what I wanted to say.

In “Spring”, my line lengths vary as I create brief stops or breaks where I want the thought/image to pause. Often at the beginning of the next line, there is a twist or additional information, a surprise. Line breaks allow me to share with the reader, the places where a pause will help with their understanding of the picture I am painting.

“Spring” is a draft poem, a work in progress. As always, my photos and words are copyright 

©2011-2015 Carol Steel.