A Poem a Day, Week 6: February 5 to 11.
Welcome to Sifting the Rubble's weekly poetry podcast. (I'm your host, and poet, Emily Gibson) This is the sixth week of my personal challenge to write a share a poem every day for the year. This week I challenged myself to some new forms of poems. I naturally gravitate towards free verse, and find that working with poetic forms hones my craft in ways I never expected. With visual structures, like #36's butterfly cinquain, or line structures, like haiku or the sestina, I am forced to think about things outside of the meaning, which actually makes the poem richer and deeper. When I return to free verse, as with the last poem this week, #42, Right and True, I find myself paying more attention to the structure and how it can deepen the poem.
A friend recommended I check out the Wednesday Night Poetry open mic, organized by Kai Coggin, a poet/teacher in Arkansas, so I did this week. It was a delight to have my reading of "I Know" shared in the open mic portion! (I put a link to the video in the blog for this week, which you can find at siftingtherubble.blogspot.com Video of "I Know" reading. The poem "I Know" is from Week 4, poem #26, originally titled "Loving You #2."
The experience of Wednesday Night Poetry makes me eager to find other ways to share poems!
Thank you for reading and/or listening!
Emily Gibson
Listen to Podcast of Week Six Poetry
Poem #36, Choices
#36 Audio Version
About "Choices": I wanted to explore a new poetry form and found this butterfly form of American cinquain. The idea of mindless vs mindful choices had been flying around in my brain all week, so it was a good fit. I am convinced the power of our lives is accessed when we are more mindful than not.
Poem #37 Two Haiku from a Bike Ride
#37 Audio Version
About "Two Haiku from a Bike Ride": Haiku is easily composed when cycling. There is something about the rhythmic pedaling that allows my mind to be free. I saw a hawk land in a tree near a pond, which was the basis for Haiku 1. Haiku 2 is based on something that happened earlier in the day when I was walking my horse, Ber, back to his pasture after a great ride. He was quite sweaty, in his long winter hair, and I knew he would roll as soon as he got back to his place. So imagine my surprise when the lead rope went suddenly taut, and I looked back to see him collapsing into the soft dirt to roll. Not once, but twice! I am going to work more on this poem, because it does not convey what I want it to, yet.
Poem #38, Time
#38 Audio Version
About "Time": This poem came about from observations of Juniper Trees at the ranch where Ber lives. I have written about Juniper trees before--they are deeply poetic creatures. But I hadn't captured what their twisted trunks conveyed to me until this poem. I had been thinking a lot about time, and how inadequate our lifetimes are to capture reality. If geologic time was the time we went by, how would that change our perspectives? I feel like there is more in this poem that I'll explore with revision eventually. And I have another poem brewing about what life would be like if bacterial time (a new generation every 30 minutes!) ruled our world...
Poem #39, Rebuilt
#39 Audio Version
About "Rebuilt": Though this poem originated in thinking about a specific "you," as I worked with it and re-read it, I recognized other people, things, jobs, and even iterations of myself as being the "you." So "you" represents anything that we are allowing to hold us back from our best selves, our most evolved selves, our greatest dreams, etc. When we dismantle the power that "you" has over us, it is shattering, but freeing.
Poem #40, Two Cascades Haiku
#40 Audio Version
About "Two Cascades Haiku": A drive over the Cascades and back, for a medical appointment, allowed close observation of the mountains. I was able to compose both poems completely while driving. Poem 1 came to me as I saw how naked the mountains were, in early February, and how worrisome this is for the summer and our water. I was thinking about how Haiku often uses references to time or season which are not direct, and I remembered seeing news reports about the groundhog seeing its shadow. Poem 2 came to me as I drove past the fire from 15 years ago near Three Fingered Jack. All the dead trees are soft silver, all the same height, looking like a short haircut, and looking striking, as the new green grows up underneath, still far away from the tops of the dead trees.
Poem #41, A Sestina on Stuff
#41 Audio Version
About "A Sestina on Stuff": I grew up in a home stuffed with stuff, and when my mom had to sift through the stuff of her parents and great grandparents, she vowed to not leave her children with the same task. She proceeded to jettison her stuff over the course of 10 years, which made it much easier to deal with her estate. Just her fabric arts, her journal, and her books/records. I remember well the phrase "Someday I'm gonna..." and had wanted to work it into a poem at some point. I found this poetic form, Sestina, interesting, because the cycling through of the end words created a forced revisiting of ideas and concepts that I never would have done in a poem otherwise. I like the effect, and want to try more Sestinas.
Poem #42, Right and True
#42 Audio Version
About "Right and True": This poem came right out of my pen, very quickly, so I have clearly been ruminating on it for a while. As with so many things in life, different people think they know what is right and true, but the reality is that a combination exists. There is not one right way. We all must come to our own understanding of what is right for us. Making many learning opportunities (aka mistakes) along the way. I especially like the last stanza. And how this poem sounds read out loud.
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