May 2014 Poetry Challenge

DEJECTION

May 2014 Poetry Challenge

While Caroline Johnson and I were planning a workshop for the Poetry Fest at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago in April, we came across Carl Sandburg’s poem “Happiness.” We both liked the poem, and Caroline immediately saw the possibility of using it as a prompt. I have borrowed her idea for this month. Here is the poem:

Happiness

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
     me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
     thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
     I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
     the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
     their women and children and a keg of beer and an
     accordion.

~ Carl Sandburg

Caroline and I were both impressed with the way Sandburg began with an abstract noun, but ended up with a concrete example of what he thought might really represent happiness. He tells us he didn’t find a good definition of happiness when he asked professors and famous executives. But by serendipity he happened on a group of people experiencing happiness.

The May Poetry Challenge

There are two kinds of nouns, abstract nouns and concrete nouns. We experience concrete nouns with our senses; they can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched. “Kitten,” “oak,” “senator,” and “mosquito” are examples of concrete nouns.

Abstract nouns are those which name states of mind, ideas, concepts, qualities, and so on. They are not experienced directly by our senses. Examples include “loyalty,” “faith,”  “misery,” and “appreciation.”

For the subject—and title—of your poem, select an abstract noun (you may refer to one of the lists found on-line, such as the one at http://examples.yourdictionary.com/reference/examples/examples-of-abstract-nouns.html.

Move in some way from that abstract term to one or more concrete illustrations.

Your poem may be a little shorter than Sandburg’s, or somewhat longer, but don’t make it a lot longer than his. You can write free verse, as did Sandburg, or you can use a form (if you use a form, identify it on your submission).

Submit only one poem. The deadline is May 15. Poems submitted after the May 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.

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 you poem has been published in a 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”. Be sure to provide your e-mail address. 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, and 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.

And Remember: The January challenge is still open, and will be until there are a few more submissions. Check the January post for complete rules.

© Wilda Morris

January 2012 Poetry Challenge

Colors can inspire very interesting poems. In “That Vase of Lilacs,” in The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (NY: Grove Press, 2010), Kay Ryan tantalizes us with the immortality of purple. In Hailstones and Halibut Bones (Doubleday, 1990), her popular book of color poems for children, Mary O’Neill says purple is “sort of a great/Grandmother to pink.”

Purple was featured in a very different way in one of my poems, which was published in the Rockford Review (Winter 2005-2006).

Propositions

Plum-purple truth drips blood
across pages of history,
across prairies and rivers and diaries.
Its fist slams into the sides
of mountains, bridges and breasts.
Its mouth devours all it desires:
dirt, deserts, and dresses.
Its boots battle, abuse,
kick against courage,
against compassion.
Where is the turquoise truth
which binds with soft scarves
not rough ropes, not scars,
the pastel pastiche of tender truth
that listens and loves?

~ Wilda Morris


Marge Piercy frequently makes use of color in her work. Perhaps that is why she entitled one of her books Colors Passing Through Us (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). The title poem of the collection has a rich palette, with its various shades of purple, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and cobalt. It’s not just any yellow (for example), though, but “Yellow as a goat's wise and wicked eyes,” and the yellows of daffodils, dandelions, egg yolks, and more.

Another excellent and interesting poem with a broad palette recently won the free verse competition in the 18th Annual Illinois State Poetry Society Contest. In “Deluxe Box,” poet Kathy Cotton likens herself not to just one crayon but to the whole box of 125 colors.

Deluxe Box

Beneath this pale Caucasian skin—the skin
of my mother’s mother and father’s father,
beneath this unremarkable brown hair
and behind these ordinary brown eyes that are the eyes
of all my family, even the dog

beneath, behind, beyond this commonness, I am

the Deluxe Box of Crayons: one hundred twenty
unblended colors scribbling exotic names—
Cerulean, Burnt Sienna, Mahogany, Maize, a crowd
of immigrant pigments unwilling to melt in my melting pot.

This Deluxe Box holds Fuchsia to attract hummingbirds.
Quaker gray for silent sitting. Outrageous Orange for
stumbling over politics. In the company of Blue, I can
match that patch of sky, her silk shirt, his denim jeans.
See me here, Red as habanero; there—White as arctic ice.

Some believe I should defect from every hue but one,
become a single color’s citizen, wear its official seal.
But, no! I am the Deluxe Box, dressing my heart in tie-dye,
rainbows, confetti; waving on the hill of each moment
its hand-made, one-of-a-kind flag. I am the Deluxe Box

whose skin is red and yellow, black and white.
I am male and female, flower and beast, bright light
and midnight. Come close, look inside. Watch me pull
from my chameleon stash a deluxe handful of myself

perfectly matched to you.

~ Kathy Cotton


You might also enjoy:
* "Theme in Yellow" by Carl Sandburg at http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/carlsandburg/4696
* "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gold.htm

The January, 2012, Poetry Challenge is to write a poem featuring a color – or colors. You may refer to paints or crayons, but that is not necessary. Your poem can be free verse or formal. If formal, please specify the form. The deadline is January 15. Poems submitted after the January 15 deadline will not be considered.

Copyright on poems is retained by their authors.

Due to formatting restrictions on the blog, all poems should be left justified. Unfortunately I am unable to publish indentations, shaped poems or even extra spaces between words or phrases.

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 periodical, you may submit it if you retain copyright, but please include publication data.

How to Submit Your Poem:

Send your poem to wildamorris[at]ameritech[dot]net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for [dot]. Be sure provide your e-mail address. When you submit your poem, add a note indicating where you took poetic license with the facts of your life. The poem should be in first person, as if it actually happened to the speaker in the poem. 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.


© 2012 Wilda Morris