Judy Young's fine poem printed below in the poems by members and her
husband's equally fine painting reproduced above show us again the close
affinity poems and paintings have. The emotions that are channeled
into creations of different kinds of art are, of course, quite similar.
A few years ago I took a drawing class at the university, and I was
surprised to find how much I enjoyed the course. It was like finding
another way home. I'm sure those of you who both paint and write
with expertise have made a similar discovery to mine. Despite my
very limited ability, I soon realized that I was emotionally
drained by drawing, and that I did not need to compose poems during
that time. The Youngs do it the right way--he paints, she writes.
They have recently have published their second book, this one a matching
of poems with paintings, including the painting and poem presented here..
Visit Judy's web site here to read more about this Springfield couple and their
books available for purchase. I am amazed at how much we can learn
from each other. Judy presented a superb workshop at the state
convention on composing sonnets. Speaking of sonnets, a very tight
form traditionally, we soon realize by reading them that through the
centuries poets have developed variations to give color to their fourteen
iambic lines, the same variations they accepted in ballads and lyrics.
Last month I introduced one of the variations to regular iambic rhythm:
the anapest (duh duh DUM). Now we are ready to study another variation
poets have used for centuries, the trochee (DUM duh) inserted into an
iambic line. This irregularity frequently appears as the first foot in the
line of a stanza of rhyming verse or as the first foot of a blank verse
line. By its difference it attracts attention to itself as an introducer
of something new, much like the indention of a prose paragraph. See how
many of these lines containing trochees (underlined) you can identify
(winner and answers in next month's issue).
1. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"
2. "Drink to me, only, with thine eyes"
3. "Looking as if she were alive. I call / That piece a
wonder now . . . " (two trochees)
4. "This is my letter to the world."
5. "Home is the sailor, home from sea"
6. "God of our fathers, known of old--"
7. "Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled"
LAST MONTH'S WINNER AND ANSWERS ON ANAPESTS (duh duh DUM)
Winner = Darwyne Tessier. 7 out of 7 correct.
1. "Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the
shot heard round the world."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Concord Hymn"
2. "And I will love thee still, my dear, / While the sands
o' life shall run ."
Robert Burns, "A Red, Red Rose"
3. "And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler,
long I stood" (two anapests)
Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"
4. "The smith a mighty man was he / With large and sinewy hands"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Village Blacksmith"
5. "We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon" (two
anapests)
William Wordsworth, "The World Is Too Much with Us, Late and Soon"
6. "And this was the reason that, long ago / In this
kingdom by the sea" (three anapests)
Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee"
7. "So we'll go no more aroving / So late into the night"
George Gordon, Lord Byron, "So We'll Go No More Aroving"
--Tom Padgett, Editor
CONTENTS:
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POEMS BY MEMBERS
BREATH OF EVENING BREEZES
Inspired by and
inspiration for the picture above
Judy Young
I painted you in my mind,
I painted you in my mind
With the colors spread across the
evening sky,
With the colors spread across the
evening sky.
Across my mind you spread
With the evening colors I painted in
the sky.
You spoke silently of your love,
You spoke silently of your love
With the breath of endless breezes,
With the breath of endless breezes.
Silently the breezes spoke of you
With your breath of endless love.
I felt your soft embrace hold my heart,
I felt your soft embrace hold my heart
With the arms of lengthened shadows,
With the arms of lengthened shadows.
With soft shadows, I felt your arms
Hold the lengthened embrace of my
heart.
The lengthened evening spoke of your
soft colors,
Felt breezes of you spread across the
sky
With the shadows in my mind.
I hold you with arms silently painted
With the breath of my heart.
I embrace your endless love.
HOMESTEAD
Phyllis Moutray
By the dusty gravel road
sat an old yellow brick-sided house
behind a hedge of many switches,
front lawn worn bare by a German
Shepherd
and three barefoot, freckled girls.
A tire swing hung from the oak tree.
A '52 royal blue Ford sedan parked
in its self-made circle drive.
The German Shepherd lay at the front
door,
over-friendly greeter to our home.
That house long ago gone,
replaced by a house gone, too,
victim of fire sparked by poor wiring.
Time moves on. Like those houses,
my childhood is long ago gone.
ON THANKSGIVING
Pat Laster
I broke
with tradition
when I left their father,
so I don't complain that I feast
alone.
CAT AND DOG
Poems for Children
Jean Even
FAT CAT --
Fat Cat, a very lazy house cat,
Slept by the window in an old straw
hat,
Couldn't be bothered to catch a mouse.
Fat Cat now sleeps in the outhouse.
BOWSER'S BALL--
Bowser, rowdy, jumping Boxer,
Played with a red ball in the back
yard.
He rolled it all over the sticky
junipers.
He's seen now only on playing cards.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET
Bev Conklin
I should probably ask Mr. Murphy.
He's in charge of things gone wrong
If he would give me an answer,
My trips could be half as long.
When looking for a restaurant
recommended by a friend,
it won't be on the right-hand side.
On that, you can depend.
The same thing always happens
with buildings I'm looking for.
I'll have to make a left-hand turn,
whether for gas, motel, or store.
Or drive on by to a traffic light,
no matter how far that may be;
turn right and go around the block
then back. Now, is it just me?
Or is there a rhyme or a reason,
some mysterious, un-balanced sheet?
Why are my places always
on the other side of the street?
HAIKU
Wesley Willis
Rising morning bones
fumble, cheerless along eyes
of night's corridor.
NO TRUE LOVE
Velvet Fackeldey
Love is just a word
that anyone can say.
Sweetness falls from your lips,
but your heart is ice.
Your voice is a melody,
but your eyes are black dots
in a gravestone face.
Your lifeless touch leaves a bruise
on my heart.
Love from your mouth
means nothing. |
NIGHT DREAMS
Mark Tappmeyer
With moonlight
falling through
blinds onto my bed,
I am a zebra
with kick.
A tiger,
lone and hungry.
I am a jailbird
scouting escape.
A Jekyll and Hyde
fighter and lover.
A treble clef
of baser notes.
A gridiron
primed for gaming.
Who needs sleep
for dreams
anyway?
STRIPED PERIL
Harding Stedler
Two skunks out for breakfast
between ripe fields of soybeans
blocked the pathway
to the overlook
above the gorge.
Neither would let a poet pass
to pick inspiration
ripe on vines among the ragweed.
Unlike the poet's world,
everything in theirs
was black and white.
In backwards steps,
to rhythms of the grain,
they thwarted
the poet's pen,
said no to lyric.
I felt the poet's anguish,
tasted the poet's defeat
and painted everything having stripes.
TRAINS
Todd Sukany
Rhythmic breathing
Passions steaming
Fires stoked
Strength unyoked
Press the rails
Hug to breakneck
Speed
Headlong
Ignoring
BRIDGE GONE.
DEAD CARDINAL
Gwen Eisenmann
Everyone sees what a poet sees:
A cardinal lying dead in snow,
his brilliance undiminished by death,
bright wound on a somber day, aglow.
Gray sky, white snow, red bird so
still
when wind and heart mourn a eulogy
and recognize what is given:
beauty frozen in memory.
Everyone hears what a poet hears
except the song of a frozen bird:
the snow, the sky, the loss, the gain,
the quivering birth of a crimson word.
DO THE PLOUGH
Tania Gray
Bodies fold into a triangle,
toes touch floor overhead, don't
strangle.
Breathe in and out with flutes and
jangle
of bells. Sacroiliacs
unbend onto purple rectangle
of spangled mats, relax.
EARLY CHICANERY
Darwyne Tessier
Such sights to be seen
at Grade One's Halloween:
small monsters--all sorts,
large heads to support!
Their candy they scoured,
their favorites devoured,
then told to stop jumping
around the prize pumpkin,
they quit for a minute
to vote who should win it.
They thought and they thought,
then printed as taught.
When votes were collected
and one was selected
from the shaken drum,
the winner was MOM.
TRIBUTE TO DONALD HALL
Tom Padgett
The poet came to town and changed
the way
we looked at things. Before, we
watched,
but now we saw. Where once they were,
they were and meant. At the
front
of the auditorium he stood and waved
his arms--
fueled by his words, he soared above
the world we walked upon. His manner
warm,
he folded us to his chest to feel that
his heart
included all of us. Instant old
friends,
we reminisced and laughed. He named the
horses,
he kicked some leaves, and then we
left--
but not alone. His poems kept him with
us.
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