Category: Poetry

National Poetry Month: Writing Wild, Day 7

Catherine Flynn23 Comments

Rachel Carson, today’s profiled author, hardly needs an introduction. She is “a monumental figure in the 20th century and founder of the modern environmental movement.” Of Carson’s Silent Spring, historian Jill Lepore noted that “the number of books that have done as much good in the world can be counted on the arms of a starfish.”

I worry that we’re forgetting the lessons of Silent Spring, that we’ve substituted other pernicious insecticides for DDT. Fighting back against large chemical companies feels impossible. Maybe this project is really just one way for me to try.

Today’s poem if a fib. Fibs are based on the Fibonacci sequence, which predicts patterns in nature. This form seemed appropriate for a poem based on the work of a woman who wrote extensively about how “earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment.” (Silent Spring, p. 16) To create this fib, I chose words at random from page 16 and 17 of Silent Spring. Then, following a syllable count to match, then mirror, the Fibonacci sequence, arranged them into a (hopefully) meaningful sequence.

Earth,
air,
river
alchemy
supports the balance,
powers earth’s enduring nature.

Man’s assault alter’s life’s habits,
modifies the chain,
alarming
forests,
soil,
rain.

Draft, © 2021, Catherine Flynn

Previous Writing Wild posts:

Day 1: Dorothy Wordsworth
Day 2: Susan Fenimore Cooper
Day 3: Gene Stratton-Porter
Day 4: Mary Austin
Day 5: Vita Sackville-West
Day 6: Nan Shepherd

National Poetry Month: Writing Wild, Day 6

Catherine Flynn25 Comments

In 1870, Nan Shepherd’s ancestors were farming sheep in the highlands of northeast Scotland. One hundred or so miles away, on the other side of the Cairngorm Mountains, my great-great-grandparents were preparing to leave Inverness for the United States. Their son, John Stuart, eventually settled in the hills of western Connecticut, where he farmed until his death in 1955. I have lived on land that was once part of that farm, where cattle grazed and apple, quince and pear trees blossomed every spring, for the past 35 years. And although the connection is tenuous, I feel a deep affinity for Nan Shepherd and her love of the Cairngorms.

Shepherd wrote three novels and a volume of poetry before publishingThe Living Mountain. It is this book for which Shepherd is best remembered today. Maria Papova describes The Living Mountain as “a most unusual braiding of memoir, field notebook, and philosophical inquiry irradiated with the poetic.”

Choosing a form for today’s poem was a challenge, but in the end I opted for another Golden Shovel.

Photo of Nan Shepherd, c. 1930, photographer unknown. Via Wikimedia
Cairngorm mountains photo by Scott. Via Wikimedia

Previous Writing Wild posts:

Day 1: Dorothy Wordsworth
Day 2: Susan Fenimore Cooper
Day 3: Gene Stratton-Porter
Day 4: Mary Austin
Day 5: Vita Sackville-West

National Poetry Month: Writing Wild

Catherine Flynn28 Comments

Vita Sackville-West, today’s featured author, is remembered by many as the lover of Virginia Woolf. Many more people remember her today because of the world-famous gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, in Kent, England, which she and her husband, Harold Nicolson, created after they bought the run-down property in 1930. Sackville-West was also a prolific poet, essayist, novelist. For many years she wrote “In Your Garden,” a weekly column about gardening that appeared in the Observer.

Portrait of Vita Sackville-West, 1918 by William Strang, via Wikimedia Commons;
Photo of Sissinghurst Garden by Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, via Wikimedia Commons

Because Sackville-West was such a prolific author (she even has her own Twitter feed!), I decided to gather a bouquet of lines and write a cento. I may have broken the rules a bit by changing tenses to help lines fit together. These words are italicized. Most of these lines come from her poem “The Garden” or her gardening columns.

The Art of Gardening

Beneath the snowy mountains of the sky,
we are watching daffodils come up in the orchards:
Evidence of life.
In April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year,
the possibilities are really unlimited.

Soon, the morning glory climbs toward the sun,
a pale blue drift,
some magic in this humbler sphere.
Overblown with roses,
I like generosity wherever I find it.

Like recurrent patterns on a scroll, 
a vast mauve-and-green cobweb, 
quivers with its own lightness and buoyancy.
Wafts of vanilla come to me,
and everywhere bees go racing with the hours,
eternally renewed evidence 
of a determination to live.
As daily life accepts the night’s arrest,
Autumn in felted slippers shuffles on, muted yet fiery
In one defiant flame before they go.

But you, oh gardener, poet that you be though unaware,
now use your seeds like words
and make them lilt with color nicely flung,
always looking forward to doing something better than before.

Previous Writing Wild posts:

Day 1: Dorothy Wordsworth
Day 2: Susan Fenimore Cooper
Day 3: Gene Stratton-Porter
Day 4: Mary Austin

National Poetry Month: Writing Wild

Catherine Flynn28 Comments

Mary Austin is today’s featured author. Like most of the women profiled in Writing Wild, Austin charted her own course in life. Aalto describes her as “an ethnographer and feminist, activist and mystic, speaker and writer.” (p. 49) In her first book, The Land of Little Rain, Austin paints a vivid picture of the plants, animals, and people of the area between the High Sierra and the Mojave Desert of California. Unlike the region she’s describing, Austin’s writing is lush and evocative: this is a place she knows and loves.

Today’s poem is another Golden Shovel. With so many rich lines to choose from, it was a challenge to pick just one, so I have woven some of Austin’s other phrases into this poem. These words are italicized.

Mary Austin in 1900
photo by Charles Lummis, via Wikipedia

Previous Writing Wild posts:

Day 1: Dorothy Wordsworth
Day 2: Susan Fenimore Cooper
Day 3: Gene Stratton-Porter

National Poetry Month: Writing Wild

Catherine Flynn29 Comments

Welcome to day 3 of Writing Wild, my National Poetry Month project for 2021. Today’s featured author is Gene Stratton-Porter, an Indiana native and author of novels and nature studies, poetry and essays. Kathryn Aalto describes Stratton-Porter as a “a fascinating figure at the nexus of early twentieth century changes in conservation and gender roles…[a] maverick.” (p. 40) Her best-known book, A Girl of the Limberlost, published in 1909, sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I know I never read it.

I was more intrigued by Stratton-Porter’s nature studies, many of which are available online. Maybe because I don’t know a lot about them, I was drawn to Moths of the Limberlost (1912). Because I could print pages from this book, I decided to create a blackout poem today. I’ve never tried this form, and finding the right page to work with was like searching for the moths themselves! I finally just picked two pages at random. And although my drawing skills are woefully inadequate, I had fun creating today’s poem.

The Yellow Emperor

moths
prefer the hickory.
Fresh leaves,
outdoors.

They moult,
growing stronger.

Transform.
Eat.
Travel.
Burrow.

Then colour greenish brown.

They shone,
burst,
and escaped
those skins.

In spring delight
emerge,

A carnival
from the Limberlost:

Winged creatures of the night.

Draft, © 2021, Catherine Flynn

Photo of Eacles Imperiales, by Gene Straton-Porter in Moths of the Limberlost

Previous Writing Wild posts:

Day 1: Dorothy Wordsworth
Day 2: Susan Fenimore Cooper

Poetry Friday & NPM: Writing Wild

Catherine Flynn43 Comments

Welcome to the first Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month! Today’s post is my response to my critique group’s monthly prompt. This month, Linda Mitchell challenged the Sunday Night Swaggers to

See something in many ways, then write a poem patterned after Pat Schneider’s ‘The Moon Ten Times.’

The object and the number of different views was our choice.

Today’s poem is also the second poem in my NPM project, Writing Wild. Susan Fenimore Cooper is the second author featured in Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World. Like Dorothy Wordsworth, Susan Fenimore Cooper is remembered mainly in relation to her famous father, James Fenimore Cooper. Also like Dorothy Wordsworth, she was a fine writer and is considered to be “America’s first nature writer.”

Rural Hours, Susan Fenimore Cooper’s best know work, captures the daily rhythms of the natural world in early-nineteenth century Cooperstown, NY. Her entry for March 22nd describes “the return of the robins.” Since returning robins are still a sure sign of spring, I took this line for the title of a week’s worth of observations of this beloved bird.

Images of Rural Hours via Wikipedia

“The Return of the Robins” 

Flash of red
against blue sky:
the robins have returned!

A riot of robins patrol 
dormant hay fields:
the borderland between 
winter and spring.

Yellow-billed
tug-of-worm champ:
nightcrawlers beware!

Adorned in feathers fine as silk,
round red breasts
reflect the morning sun.

Feathered flutists 
fill the dawn
with their winsome refrain:
Cheer-up, cheer-up, cheer-up

Scavenger of sticks
and straw:
nestchitect

Mud-daubed nests
filled with a trove of turquoise eggs:
promises for tomorrow.

Draft, © 2021 by Catherine Flynn

Please visit my fellow Swaggers to read their responses to Linda’s challenge:

Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Heidi Mordhorst @ My Juicy Little Universe
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche

Then head over to Mary Lee’s blog, A Reading Year, for the Poetry Friday Roundup and more NPM celebrations!

National Poetry Month: Writing Wild

Catherine Flynn35 Comments

Welcome to “Writing Wild,” my National Poetry Month project for 2021. A few months ago, I came across Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World, by Kathryn Aalto. The title immediately drew me in, and I have been savoring this book, which “celebrates 25 women whose influential writing helps deepen our connection to and understanding of the natural world,” ever since. Many of these women were very familiar and some I had heard of, but others were completely new to me. Aalto highlights an additional 47 women whose work is also grounded in the natural world. I soon realized that I could spend the rest of my life reading all of the books written by these trailblazing women. I also realized that these women were a deep well of inspiration. And so this project was born.

My goal this year is to use the writing of each of the 25 featured writers to inspire a poem. (I have chosen 5 of the highlighted authors to round out the list to 30.) Originally, I thought I would do a Golden Shovel every day, but because words and ideas often suggest the appropriate form, I think I’d like to leave my options open.

All of the writers included in Writing Wild pushed back against the expectations and/or restrictions society placed on them. The first featured writer, Dorothy Wordsworth may have been eclipsed by her famous brother, William, but, Dorothy also wrote poetry, letters and kept journals, recording her keen observations of England’s Lake District. Aalto states that Dorothy “wrote so well that both her brother and Coleridge are known to have lifted phrases from her journals.”

And so I begin National Poetry Month with a Golden Shovel, using the following lines of Dorothy’s from “Grasmere–A Fragment:”

“…to wander out alone.
Lured by a little winding path…”

You can discover more National Poetry Month projects by visiting Susan Bruck at Soul Blossom Living.

Poetry Friday: National Poetry Month Warm-Up

Catherine Flynn15 Comments

T.S. Eliot may think that “April is the cruelest month,” but I’m over March and looking forward to National Poetry Month. I’ve been planning a project that I’m excited about, but am not ready to share the details today. While I was tidying up my classroom this afternoon it occurred to me that some book spine poetry would be a good way to warm up for next month. Here are a few short poems, courtesy of some of my favorite authors.

Ask me
how to heal a broken wing:
love
I wonder
how to read a book.
Follow the recipe
after dark.
You nest here with me,
this place I know.
The wisdom of trees
sweep up the sun
green on green
If you come to Earth,
hike
a world of wonders.
Footprints on the roof.

Looking forward to seeing you all next week for the beginning of National Poetry Month. In the meantime, be sure to visit Susan Bruck at Soul Blossom Living for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

Poetry Friday: March Swagger Challenge

Catherine Flynn13 Comments

It’s the first Friday of March. Time for another Sunday Swagger Challenge. Each month, one member of my critique group poses a challenge for us all to respond to. This month, Margaret Simon posed a very flexible prompt: “Using any book, choose three page numbers. On the chosen pages, find one word to use. Write a poem.”

This seemed very manageable. One of my students has been reading Kate DiCamillo’s books, and Kate’s exquisite use of language has always inspired me, so I pulled a copy of Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures off the shelf and found these three words: variations, floating, glowing

An image of clouds came into my head as I considered these words. Here is the draft I came up with:

Clouds

Tenuous ideas cling together,
like water droplets fusing
into wisps of clouds floating
in an azure sky.

Slowly, word by word,
a line forms.
Line follows line
until they coalesce 
into a poemling,
glowing with promise.

Maybe this baby poem,
fragile as it is,
is a variation on an old theme.

No matter.
Just as clouds come in all
shapes and sizes,
possibilities for poems
are infinite.

And so we keep on
writing.

Draft, © 2021, Catherine Flynn

Photo by Brett Jordan via Unsplash

Please be sure to visit my fellow Swaggers to read their responses to Margaret’s challenge:

Heidi Mordhorst @ My Juicy Little Universe
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Then be sure to head to Kat Apel’s blog for the Poetry Friday Roundup.

 

Poetry Friday: Winter Morning

Catherine Flynn18 Comments

Every month, one of my critique group partners poses a challenge to the group and we all post our responses on the first Friday of the month. This month, it was my turn to come up with a prompt. Since life has been challenging enough lately, I wanted to pose more of a supportive opportunity than a challenge. This passage from S. Kirk Walsh’s essay “How E.L. Doctorow Taught an Aspiring Writer to Hear the Sounds of Fiction” in The New York Times Book Review was exactly what I had in mind:

For the final writing assignment, Doctorow asked us to choose one of the works on the syllabus and borrow — or steal — from it in a fiction of our own... I chose “The Waves”: I copied Woolf’s sentences word for word, then replaced her language with my own.

So our challenge was simply this: Copy a mentor poem (or other text) “word for word, then replace [that poet’s] language with your own.” Finding a mentor poem was easier than I thought it would be. Looking for another book, I found Light & Shadow (Holiday House, 1992), a book of poems by Myra Cohn Livingston inspired by photographs by Barbara Rogasky. Livingston’s poem, “Late Afternoon,” caught my attention immediately.

“Light rests
in the crooked
elbows and branches of
old trees,

drowses
in the shadows
of moss-covered rocks, naps
In piles

of leaves
scattered over
forest floors, stretches out
to sleep

and dreams
itself wearing
a shining necklace of
dewdrops.”

Isn’t that stunning?

Here is the poem my “borrowing” inspired:

Winter Morning

Light seeps
through the outstretched
fingers and branches of
bare trees,

rouses
birds, roosted
in a tangle of brush, quickens
the blood

of cardinals and jays,
who flutter around
snow-covered feeders, reaches 
deep into the shadows

and dreams
itself wearing
an iridescent crown of
feathers.

Draft, © 2021, Catherine Flynn

Please visit my fellow Sunday Night Swaggers to see where their borrowings led them:

Heidi Mordhorst @ My Juicy Little Universe
Linda Mitchell @ A Word Edgewise
Margaret Simon @ Reflections on the Teche
Molly Hogan @ Nix the Comfort Zone

Then head over to Jone Rush MacCulloch’s lovely blog for the Poetry Friday Roundup.