MARCH 2015 POETRY CHALLENGE WINNERS: FISH / FISHING

Fish and fishing turned out to be popular topics for poets. Evidently I am not the only person with good memories associated with fishing, and not the only person who likes to eat fish!

The judges, Jim Lambert and jacob erin-cilberto, selected four poems – first and second place and a tie for third. I want to thank the judges and congratulate the winners.

Some of the winning poems are fairly concrete; others are more metaphoric. I hope you will enjoy all four poems. Please remember that the poets own the copyright to their poems; do not copy them without permission.

Perch

I can sense it a shooting star, 

a glint of stellular motion inspiring 

hope to fools and children, 

a delusion, a misunderstanding 

of what is actual, what is real 

that pierces the sky

It’s like a whisper of leaves 

hanging from massive cottonwood 

trees along the Missouri River, 

investing all year to growing cotton candy 

fluff while gossiping unabashedly 

like hotel maids in the laundry

~ Jessica Lindsley

Alchemy

Today at market on Devon

I bought a small lake trout,

brought it home to grill 

or sauté gently in the skillet

with lemon sliced, and garlic slivered,

an evergreen sprig of parsley

as a garland for my platter.

Now as heat transforms 

the pink translucent flesh into meat

light as air, white as bone,

I give thanks for I will eat

what was yesterday a rainbow

moving through the water,

translating sunlight into matter.

- Gay Guard-Chamberlin

The second place poem is:

The Line

She came to leave

A fishing lure

Firmly embedded in my lip

To wave in the breeze

As if to say

That I was the big one

Who got away

~ Phil Rice

And finally, the first place poem:

Floundering

I’ve left myself open for love.

I crave the feeling of lightness,

the sudden lift of a heart

that’s traveled on such guarded wings.

I am defenseless:

a splayed flounder

on a bed of ice

in the window of a shanty

in the middle of town.

Love makes you want to take that risk.

~ Susan Mahan

The Winning Poets:

Susan Mahan has been writing poetry since her husband died in 1997. She is a frequent reader at poetry venues and has written four chap book. Her poems have been published in a number of journals and anthologies.

Phil Rice lives and writes in Woodstock, Illinois. He has edited Canopic Jar, a literary arts journal, since 1986.

Gay Guard-Chamberlin is a Chicago-based poet and performer, as well as a visual artist. Gay is currently working on a long-term multi-disciplinary collaborative project called Collage Collage. She is a member of Poets & Patrons and ISPS. Four of her shorter poems are currently featured on Nic Sebastian's website, poetrystorehouse.com.  

Jessica Lindsley grew up in North Dakota before the oil boom. Her work has been published in the Smoking Pot, Blackwood Press, Thirteen Myna Birds, DEAD SNAKES, cryopoetry and other publications.

The Judges:

Jim Lambert lives with is wife of 50 years and two 31 year-old desert tortoises in Southern Illinois. He has had poetry and short fiction published in several small poetry and fiction magazines. He is a past president of the Southern Illinois Writers Guild and is active in Southern Illinois community theater.

jacob erin-cilberto, originally from Bronx, NY, now resides in Carbondale, Illinois. He currently teaches at John A. Logan and Shawnee Community colleges in Southern Illinois. His work has appeared in numerous small magazines and journals including: Café Review, Skyline Magazine, Hudson View, Wind Journal, Pegasus, Parnassus and others. erin-cilberto also writes reviews of poetry books for Chiron Review, Skyline Review, Birchbrook Press and others. His previous three books an Abstract Waltz, Used Lanterns and Intersection Blues are available through Water Forest Press. His books are also available on Barnes and Noble.com and Amazon.com as well as Goodreads. erin-cilberto has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry in 2006-2007-2008 and again in 2010. He teaches poetry workshops for Heartland Writers Guild, Southern Illinois Writers Guild and Union County Writers Guild.

Check back on April 1 for the April Poetry Challenge. You just might be a winner!

© Wilda Morris

March 2015 Poetry Challenge

There are quite a few famous poems about fish and fishing. One of the most famous is a poem by John Wolcot, who wrote under the pen name "Peter Pindar." Wolcot was born in 1738 and died in 1819. His name is not as well-known now as it once was, in part because much of his poetry was about current events and about the celebrities of his day. His poem about fishing, however, has stood the test of time.

To A Fish of the Brook

Why fliest thou away with fear?
Trust me there's naught of danger near,
     I have no wicked hook
All covered with a snaring bait,
Alas, to tempt thee to thy fate,
     And drag thee from the brook.

O harmless tenant of the flood,
I do not wish to spill thy blood,
     For nature unto thee,
Perchance hath given a tender wife,
And children dear, to charm thy life,
     As she hath done for me.

Enjoy thy stream, O harmless fish;
And when an angler for his dish,
     Through gluttony's vile sin,
Attempts, a wretch, to pull thee out,
God give thee strength, O gentle trout,
     To pull the rascal in!

~ John Wolcot (Peter Pindar)

The poem is rhymed and metered. Wolot doesn’t tell us what kind of fish the poem is addressed to until the next to last line when he needs the word “trout” to rhyme with “out.” Note how he seeks to create a sense of identification with the fish.

Wolcot was known for his wit and satire, so I suspect that he intended this poem to be humorous. The message has been taken more seriously by some contemporary animal rights groups, however.

Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “The Fish,” which you can read at http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/fish-2, is an entirely different kind of poem. It isn’t reproduced here, because it is not yet in the public domain.

Bishop’s poem is well-crafted free verse. She uses a number of poetic devices, including similes, vivid imagery, and alliteration. There are two very short sentences near the beginning of the poem. After that most of the poem, though consisting of short lines, is made up of long, run-on sentences. This structure, it seems to me, gives more “punch” to the six word concluding sentence.

Like Wolcot, Bishop creates in the reader a sense of identification with and sympathy for the fish, but she does it in a very different way than he did. Her detailed descriptions of the fish and the hooks in its lip are important in that regard, as is the idea of looking into the eyes of the fish. The fish and its plight may be metaphoric, suggesting the struggles which people go through in life.

While the fish in Bishop’s poem is old, ugly and described in detail, the trout William Butler Yeats wrote about was “silver.” That one word is the only description given to the fish caught by the narrator. But what a fish! Yeats made good use of his imagination in this poem:

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire aflame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

 ~ William Butler Yeats

This is, of course, another rhymed and metered poem. Is it a dream poem? Aengus is the name of a got in Irish mythology, but the story told by this haunting poem doesn’t retell any of the traditional stories. Much ink has used in trying to explain all the symbolism of the poem. Do you think the main theme of the poem is obsessive or unrequited love? Human longing for what is unattainable? Essentially every object in the poem, from the moths to the “silver apples of the moon” and “golden apples of the sun” have been interpreted metaphorically.

March Poetry Challenge:

The poetry challenge for March is to write a poem about fish or fishing. Maybe you went fishing with your father or grandfather, or took your child fishing. Perhaps you love a good fish fry, or maybe you can’t stand the taste or texture of tuna.

Your submission can be a narrative poem, such as Bishop’s poem, about a realistic fish. It can be a magical fish such as the silver fish in Yeats’ poem. Or the fish or fishes or fishing can be metaphoric. Be sure your poem is about fishing or about a fish. A starfish is not a fish, despite its name (some scientists are trying to persuade us to call them sea stars), nor are sand dollars. Octopi are not fish, nor are whales.

Submit only one poem. The deadline is March 15. Poems submitted after the March 15 deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards; however winners are published on this blog. Please don’t stray far from “family-friendly” language.

Copyright on each poem is retained by the poet.

Poems published in books or on the Internet (including Facebook and other on-line social networks) are not eligible. If your poem has been published in a print periodical, you may submit it if you retain copyright, but please include publication data.

How to Submit Your Poem:

Send one poem only to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”) . Include a brief bio which can be printed with your poem, if you are a winner this month.

Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name (exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win) at the end of the poem. Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment. Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all in capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Also, please do not use spaces instead of commas in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique; I sometimes do it myself. However I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.

Poems shorter than 30 lines are generally preferred. Also, if lines are too long, they don’t fit in the blog format and have to be split, so you might be wise to use shorter lines.

Some Other Interesting Poems about Fish or Fishing:

David Bond, “Fishing With the Hair Of The Dead,” in American Chicken (New York: iUniverse, Inc., 2007), pp. 13-17.

“Billy Collins, “Fishing on the Susquehanna in July,” in Picnic, Lightening (Pittsburg: Pittsburgh University Press, 1998), p. 7-8.

James Merrill, “The Parrot Fish,” in James Merrill, Selected Poems 1946-1985 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), p. 81.

Pablo Neuruda, “El Pescador”/”The Fisherman,” in Pablo Neruda, Five Decades: A Selection (Poems: 1925-1970) A Bilingual Edition Edited and Translated from the Spanish by Ben Belitt (New York: Grove Press, 1974), pp. 304-305.

Mary Oliver, “Gannets,” “Dogfish,” and “The Fish,” in New and Selected Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), pp. 28-29, 103-105, 165. [Note: Gannet’s are birds—but they eat fish, so fish are important to the poem.]

Henriëtte Roland-Holst, “Mother of Fishermen,” in The Penguin Book of Women Poets, edited by Carol Cosman, Joan Keefeand and Kathleen Weaver (Middlesex, England and New York: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 222.

 

Sandy Stark, “Learning to Fish” in Counting on Birds by Sandy Stark (Fireweed Press, 2010) ; also at http://wildamorris.blogspot.com/2013/06/june-2013-poetry-challenge-learning.html.

For more fish poems on line, see http://www.poetryfoundation.org/search/?q=fish. This collection will not only take you fishing, it will also take you to a fish market.

© Wilda Morris