I recently read
"Why I'm Not a Carpenter," by Tony Barnstone, in his new book, The
Beast in the Room (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2014), pp. 12-14. The narrator
of the poem is working along side his brother on a carpentry job. The brother
hits the nails just right, in an iambic rhythm. The narrator warps the nail,
because "half my mind's / trying to write a poem." Any poet can
identify with that! Often "half my mind's trying to write a poem"
as I do dishes, vacuum the floor, drive to church, or engage in other tasks.
Barnstone's poem
would have been a good example poem for the January challenge, to write a poem
about writing poetry or being a poet. I didn't read Barnstone's poem until
after the challenge was posted, however, and the three example poems provided
enough of a prompt.
John Milkereit, the January Poetry
Challenge judge, picked one formal poem, a kyrielle
sonnet, and one free verse poem as winners.
A Poet
Words promenade the world searching
for the essence of man’s being,
from spring through winter of his life.
My lyrics, the soul of man’s strife
embroider visions of grandeur,
and when life’s plan takes a detour
they celebrate with drum and fife.
My lyrics, the soul of man’s strife
resound with song, death’s elegance,
though they too will know its silence.
Are they redemption or just rife,
my lyrics, the soul of man’s strife?
Words promenade the world searching
for lyrics, the soul of man’s strife.
~ Timm Holt
Timm is a retired physician living with his partner in
Chicago. His work has appeared in numerous journals, and his debut novel, Square Affair, will be available soon in
bookstores and on Amazon. Timm also writes a weekly blog, Home Town Tales, where he reminisces about life remembered in a
small Midwestern town.
The free verse poem is an extended metaphor which may send
some readers to the dictionary.
Herpetologically
Yours
All the poets I
know are snakes;
we’re
skin-shedder types composing
one uncommon
one line in common Times Roman Bold,
another rare
line, sans serif, in dainty Arial,
italicized.
We are the
ouroboros symbolically
taking tales
into our cotton mouths.
We rattle;
primordial bones stir.
We hiss; the
limbic speaks.
One among us
squiggles the couplets of Cleopatra’s asp.
Another’s
masked in a villanelle à la fer-de-lance.
Yet another
uncoils her mamba-tanka.
I, however, am
a sonnet’s charming cobra.
I stare.
You are
mesmerized.
~ Karla Linn
Merrifield
An eight-time
Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn
Merrifield has had some 500 poems appear in dozens of journals and
anthologies. She has ten books to her credit, the newest of which are Lithic
Scatter and Other Poems (Mercury Heartlink) and Attaining Canopy: Amazon
Poems (FootHills Publishing). Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan
Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. She is assistant editor and
poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com).
Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.
Timm and Karla
maintain copyright on their poems.
Congratulations to both of the winners, and thanks to the
judge. Although John is from Chicago, I never met him in San Miguel de Allende,
GTO, Mexico, where we have both attended the San Miguel Poetry Week. His sense
of humor makes him a popular open mic reader.
John Milkereit is a rotating equipment
engineer working at an engineering contracting firm in Houston, TX. His poems
have appeared in various literary journals such as Big River Poetry Review and San
Pedro River Review. His chapbooks are Home
& Away and Paying Admissions
(Pudding House Press, 2010). He is currently enrolled in the second year of a
low-residency M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing
Workshop in Tacoma, WA.
© Wilda Morris
