March 2010 Poetry Challenge

Richard Vargas, who was born and raised in Southern California, currently lives and writes in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He first gained a measure of fame by publishing and editing The Tequilla Review from 1977-1979. Since then, he has published two books of poetry, Mclife, published by Main Street Rag, and American Jesus: Poems, published by Tia Chucha Press.

His short poem, “why i feed the birds,” is an example of the challenge for March: to write a poem explaining something about yourself.


why i feed the birds

once
i saw my grandmother hold out
her hand cupping a small offering
of seed to one of the wild sparrows
that frequented the bird bath she
filled with fresh water everyday

she stood still
maybe stopped breathing
while the sparrow looked
at her, then the seed
then back as if he was
judging her character

he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled

a woman holding a small god

---Richard Vargas
© Richard Vargas. Used by permission of the author

Vargas gives us an image we can see. I can almost hear the narrator’s grandmother’s breath stop as the sparrow eyes her. The last line is a wonderful surprise.


John Lehman, the founding editor of Rosebud, lives and writes in Wisconsin. Hi is currently the poetry editor of Wisconsin People and Ideas. Lehman has a wry sense of humor. Many of his more recent poems, including many of those in his book, Shorts: 101 Brief Poems of Wonder and Surprise, are quite short and are printed as small rectangles, reminding me of little boxes or Post-it® Notes.

In the following poem, which is longer than his “Shorts,” Lehman uses an unusual metaphor to explain his poetic habit.


Why I Write Poems

It’s like cutting grass
after dark
pivoting the old mower’s
wheel around the end
of each line
to make a pattern of
textures
you can’t see
but sense
by the sound
(of blades)
by the feel
or the constellation
of fireflies
that dance above it
when you’re done.
I’ve experienced both
and there is
one difference,
it’s when morning comes
the lawn
a splendid
glistening present
wrapped in dew
and the other
less real than
imagined
the gift you seek.

-- John Lehman
Shrine of the Tooth Fairy(Cambridge, Wisconsin: Cambridge Book Review Press, 1998), p. 83.

Note # 1: This book was illustrated by Spencer Walts. On amazon.com, Walts is erroneously listed as the author.

Note # 2: Lines 2, 4-5, 7-12, 14-16, 18-19, 21-24, and 26-27 should be indented, but the blog does not seem to provide that option.

Note # 3: If you click on an underlined book title, it will take you to that book on amazon.com.


Do you hear the sound of the blades (and the poet's alliteration? Do you see those fireflies dancing above the dew-wet grass?

The Challenge for March is to write a poem with a title which begins, “Why I” (or “why i”). Explain why you drive a 1957 Mustang, why you walk to the mall, why you prefer your oatmeal cold, or . . . . well, you decide what to explain about yourself! Your poem can be as serious as the one by Vargas, or it can be humorous. Follow Lehman’s example and build your poem around a metaphor, if you wish. You have poetic license, so you can explain why you boogie with the baby, even if you don't really do it.

Your poem can be free verse, or you can use a form (sonnet, villanelle, etc.), but include a note saying what form you are using. Poems of 40 or fewer lines have a better chance of being selected, but longer submissions will be read and considered.

Send your poem to wildamorris [at] ameritech[dot] net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and . for [dot], and don’t leave any spaces. Or you can access my Facebook page and send the poem in a message. Be sure to give me your e-mail address so I can respond. Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog, if it is a winner.

Challenge Deadline: March 15, 2010.

© 2010 Wilda Morris

February Poetry Challenge Winners

Two poems were chosen as winners of the February Poetry Challenge. Although both poems are free verse, they are quite different, because the chosen personas are different. In “Final Stage,” Peggy Trojan speaks for Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Ross studied the psychological process of preparing for death. She concluded that it was normal to go through “stages” of denial, anger, bargaining and depression before coming to acceptance. Trojan focuses on Kubler-Ross’s biography, especially in relationship to her father.


Final Stage

It’s Elisabeth, Father.
Yes, work is good.
I feel I am helping many.
There is fear, much sadness.
I have started work on a book.

Three sisters could not live
in the same womb after birth.
I had to go my way. Not your office.
You were fierce. A child cannot
be bent to a parent’s choosing.

Oh, I forgave you long ago.
It was cruel to kill my pet hare.
I could never again eat hasenpfeffer.
It only strengthened my resolve.
Everything happens to teach our purpose.

I still have the doll you bought me
when I was five and ill.
I remember often your songs, our walks.
I share your need for forest quiet.
I have kept our Kubler name.

Life on this earth is only one stage.
We will meet again in brighter light.
I love you too, Father.
Hush now. I will stay with you.
The butterfly will come.

-- Peggy Trojan


A different vocabulary and style of speech is used by Anna Yin, as she voices Sylvia Plath’s thoughts in the night. Yin began with “Lament” as the title, in part, because Plath has a poem by that name. Plath also titled a poem, “Insomniac,” from which Yin drew the title, “Insomnia.”

Insomnia

I cut an echoless love
in pale moonlight.

Ashes of stars slip
from my face.

You remain in a secret garden.
My shadow clings to the splitting wall.

The taste of blood edges
up my bleeding fingers.

Water rises on a lake
and the moon drowns.

--Anna Yin


Thanks to the others who entered this month. I enjoyed reading all the poems. Thank you to the consulting judge, Judith Infante, author of Love: a Suspect Form — Heloise and Abelard(Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2008), p. 35.

February 2010 Poetry Challenge

A number of contemporary poets have been writing persona poems from the perspective of individuals from the past. These poems are written in the first person, as if they were written by the historical character him- or herself. The poet gives voice to the character, usually someone who is no longer living. In order to be effective, poets have to do research the biography of the person they select and the time period in which that person lived.

One poet who has been successful in writing persona poems is Jennifer Clement. She has written in the voice of Albert Einstein, as well as Marie Curie. Marie Curie and her husband Pierre pioneered research on radiation. In a series of seven poems, written as letters from Marie to Pierre Curie after his death, Clement express Madame Curie’s grief, and also Marie’s deteriorating condition.

Seven Letters Written to Marie Curie
to Pierre Curie After His Death

Letter I

Kindled by uranium
the great room glowed.
Even from two streets away,
as we walked to the laboratory,
we could see the matter
through the window’s seams.
Inside, your chair and lab coat
grew sheer, green, phosphorescent,
pencils were luminous.
Albino rays appeared
in the decimals of our cells
as we quietly became radioactive.
You said, “polonium, radium,”
and your tongue and teeth were yolk opalescent
as if your speech were lit.
I wrote, “I extracted from the mineral
the radium-bearing barium and this,
in the state of chloride,
I submitted to fractional crystallization,”
and the paper warmed
to 98.9 degrees Fahrenheit.
In that room,
black and white
had left the world.

--Jennifer Clement
New and Selected Poems (Exeter: Shearsman, 2008), pp. 71-72).


Judith Infante’s book, Love: A Suspect Form, has been called a novel in verse form. Infante follows events in the lives of the 12th century philosopher Peter Abelard and his student, Heloise, a story which has fascinated people for centuries. The love that developed between them was forbidden by culture and church (and more specifically, the Pope). After the birth of their son, Astralabe, they were secretly married, but did not live together. Abelard sent Heloise back to the convent where she had grown up. In revenge, Heloise's uncle had Abelard drugged and castrated. Many of Infante’s poems are persona poems, told in the voices of Abelard, Heloise, Astralabe and others. Infante weaves elements of the myth of Atalanta into the story.

Here is an early poem in the sequence, when Heloise has just become Abelard's student. The setting for this poem is Canon Fulbert’s residence, Close of Notre Dame, Paris.

Heloise: Lesson

vellum from a goat’s skin
bound into books

quills and ink on a table
first lesson

at midnight listen
my master climbs the stair

a mother might have taught me
the signs of a snare

who can tutor me now
in the art of breaking free

--Judith Infante
Love: a Suspect Form — Heloise and Abelard (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2008), p. 35.


In his book, Tongue of War: from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki, winner of the 2009 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, Tony Barnstone's poems represent the viewpoints of people involved in or impacted by World War II, in particular, the Pacific theater. The original impetus for the book was a dinner with Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane which dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. One of the poems is from his perspective:

The Pilot’s Tale

In the plane’s glass nose the whole sky
lit up the beautifulest blue
you ever seen, bright blue, but I
did not react when the bomb blew.
Not right away. Then I turned round
and saw the cloud of boiling dust
bubbling upwards from the ground
where I guess Hiroshima must
have been, and felt the silver fillings
electrify my teeth. They sent
the chills all through me, boots to hair.
We wiped ‘em out. And as for killing
the ones they say were innocent—
that’s their tough luck for being there.

--Tony Barnstone
Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki (Winner of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry; Kansas City MO: BkMk Press, 2009), p. 80.


Barnstone was not content to view the war only from the viewpoint of U.S. officers. For fifteen years, he read transcripts of oral histories, letters, and books about World War II, and conducted interviews, in order to gather experiences and opinions of soldiers and civilians from both sides. A piece of him wanted to abandon the project – it was painful to read and write about the impact of the atomic bomb on the survivors, the Bataan Death March, cannibalism, and other aspects of the war. But, he says in the introduction to the book,“the voices continued to clamor about what they had seen.”

Here is one of the poems voicing a Japanese perspective, based largely on an oral history with a naval officer, who (after the war) recorded his feelings at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor:

They Could Have Given It to Us

but they kept every drop of oil.
That’s why the need to kill flared up
like hot gas in our blood and boiled
all Buddhist conscience out of us.
Today I am a priest, and still
I use the discipline I learned
at the Academy. To kill
is wrong. I know. But then I burned
for it. Pearl Harbor made me burst
with joy. We needed oil, just that.
We had no choice but to strike first.
A cornered mouse will bite a cat.

--Tony Barnstone

Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki (Winner of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry; Kansas City MO: BkMk Press, 2009), p. 27.


Here are some additional books of persona poems which you might find interesting (If you click on the title of a book on this blog, it will take you to amazon.com, where the book can be purchased).

* Six by Eve Wood Persona poems from the perspectives of the six wives of Henry VIII.

* Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York (Kentucky Voices) by Eve Wood. Poems from the perspective of York, who played an important role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Enslaved, York asked Clark for his freedom after the expedition.

* Commonwealth of Wings: An Ornithological Biography Based on the Life of John James Audubon (Wesleyan Poetry) by Pamela Alexander. Persona poems fromt he perspective of the most famous of all North American Ornithologists.

* They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems by Quraysh ali Lansana. Persona poems telling the story of Harriet Tubman, who led so many slaves to freedom. Some are in her voice and others are from other perspectives.


The February 2010 Poetry Challenge

The challenge for February is to write a persona poem from the perspective of someone in history. You can pick a pharaoh or slave from ancient Egypt, a monk from the Middle Ages faced with the impact of the plague, an ancient emperor of China or India, a former president or First Lady of the U.S., or . . . . well, you decide!

You may use (or bend) a form (label it as a sonnet, triolet, or whatever), or write in free verse. Poems of 40 or fewer lines have a better chance of being selected. I still have not figured out how to post shaped poems or poems with indents, so it is best to submit a poem with every line starting on the left margin. The winning poem or poems will be posted before the end of February. Sign your poem with your name as you would like it to appear on the blog if you are a winner. Winners retain rights to their own poems. Send your poem to wildamorris [at] Ameritech[dot] net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and . for [dot], and don’t leave any spaces. Or you can access my Facebook page and send the poem in a message. Be sure to give me your e-mail address so I can respond.

Challenge Deadline: February 15, 2010.

© 2010 Wilda Morris

January 2010 Challenge Winner

Thanks to those who entered the January challenge. There were several interesting poems in contention. The following, a Shakespearean sonnet, is the winner.

My Mother Sang To Me

A minstrel's lyric on a city street
Betrays a moment past, a memory
Held captive by a siren's song: retreat
Is my indulgence, to a panoply
Of silver maples scattering the sun
Upon my eyes like tiny dancing sprites,
The specters of my boyhood beasts undone
By strains from Orpheus and the delights
Of Pan's seductive reed, the sounds adrift
On perfumed breezes in the melodies
My mother sang to me; and they shall lift
Me on my wistful passage, and appease
My soul. For past and present, both, I yearn;
To neither am I able to return.

-- Paul Buchheit

Congratulations, Paul!

January 2010 Poetry Challenge

During the December holidays there is a lot of focus on children, which causes many people to think back on their own childhood. Some people have a Disneyesque view of childhood, as if it were all fun and play. I’ve always know that is not the case, but the truth was pounded into me one day when I was leading a workshop for a small group of persons working with children in their churches. I asked the participants to think quietly about one time or space in their childhood when or where they felt especially happy, safe, warm and loved. One man became very morose. When it came time to share, he said that he realized during those quiet moments that there had never been a time in his childhood when he felt really happy and safe in his own home. He had to place his young self mentally in a friend’s home to find a safe and warm spot. I fear that there are many people who can identify with his experience.

My own childhood was a more normal mixture of happy and unhappy experiences. There were members of my family whose love I never doubted—and a missing father whom I never knew and of whom I have only one traumatic memory. There was the apple tree where I had my own special branch—and occasionally switches broken off to be used when I was naughty. There was a lengthy separation from my older sister and my grandparents (in whose home I lived)—with the resulting adventure of six months in New York where Mother helped care for cousins and my uncle did rounds of the neighborhood when there were brown-outs due to World War II. There were good childhood friends as well as teachers at church and at Longfellow School in Iowa City who took a special interest in me—and a few boys who bullied me.

One of the wonderful things about poetry is that all these experiences, both the good ones and the bad ones, can inspire us to write. Writing can help us re-experience the good times and heal from the painful ones.

Here is a poem based on one of my powerful childhood memories, the first time I was allowed to go to the neighborhood store alone. It was an experience from which I learned an important lesson about people.

Neighbor

I squeezed the loaf of bread tighter,
as tears burned a path down my
dirty cheeks. Here I was,
in the middle of the block,
on the right side of the street,
exactly where my house should be.
But it was not. What evil magic
had changed the world?
Where was my home, with Grandmother
waiting for bread? My head
turned to the ground. I shrank,
my wails now larger than I.

Hearing something, I looked
through the fog of tears
and there you were.
You - the wolf who ate
Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother,
Peter, Peter who kept his wife
in a pumpkin shell, the witch
who tried to push Hansel in the oven.
I'd known who you were since I was four!
If I peeked between lilac bushes
and saw you in your garden, I would run.
Fridays, I saw taxi drivers bring you home,
help you stagger to the door.
I heard your wife crying in the night,
your son's shrieks, saw welts
and bruises next day - and his eyes.

And here you were.
You knelt, and with a tender voice
I'd never heard you use,
asked, What's the matter, Billye?
How could you understand the words
I sputtered, saying I was lost?

And yet you did. And with one hand
lightly on my shoulder, the other
pointing, said, Look,
you can see your house from here.
I bolted across the weedy field,
still clutching the bread,
not saying thank you.

Wilda Morris

Published in Prairie Light Review XXIX:2 (Spring 2009), p. 6.

Helen Degen Cohen recently published her book, habry, a memoir in poetry of growing up Jewish in Eastern Europe during a frightful time in history. Her father was a barber, which gives hair special metamorphic significance, even as it brings back tactile memories. In this powerful and poignant poem, she braids father, mother and child, head hair and underarm hair, into one family. The poem combines realism with something somewhat mysterious, which represents well the fact that often a child intuits the fact that something important is happening, but doesn’t know or understand what is going on.

Here is what the poet herself says regarding this poem and the book it appears in: “First of all, many Habry poems were inspired by my writing of the novel, The Edge of the Field, several pieces of which were published (with awards) over the years (the latest in Where We Find Ourselves in 2009) -- poems wafted up AS I was writing that book decades ago. “Hair” is one of those concrete, tactile, and I'd say physical/emotional more-than-images, about which many writers (including myself) have written. For me it had an added meaning, given that my father was a barber all his life and through the war. It actually helped to save our lives. Ah, but there was more (there always is): he said he married my mother because of her ‘red hair’.”

If your mother braided your hair, or if you ever curled up in the arms of your father, smelling his underarm hair, you will find this poem especially moving!


Hair
For Joseph and Bella, on the eve of War

That is my pale, orange mother
Crinkling the pert panienka’s hair.
Her own, an abandon of warm silk
To and fro. Then it fades away.

Sometimes she braids my hair into circles
And hums, as if ours were a place for humming.
What is it mothers know?
What is she braiding into my hair?

The sun is shining. There’s a bird in the window,
There are voices in the street, in our old village, there is
Darkness around us, yet everything is bright,
Stars seem to shine through the very daylight.

My father’s hurt eyes come closer,
Closer, he takes me into his arms.
I lie beside the fragrance of his underarm
Hair, his warm, moist turnings, the stars.

Soon I will be almost five years old.
And still, what I know hides behind the star.
So said the gypsy, long ago,
Your father the barber is going to war.

Up and back he walks, to the door.
He carries me on his back, we laugh,
And still, curled in his eyes are ghosts.
He touches my crib, my toes, my ear,

Knowing that without me there will be no world,
No scissors, no long black combs, no hair,
No brown strap to carry the razor
Up and back, up and back.

Up and back, he walks to the door,
The gypsies stirring the hair on the floor

And that is my pale orange mother
Suddenly trying to fade away.
She braids her humming into my hair,
Her silence into my wild hair.

Helen Degen Cohen(Halina Degenfisz)

Habry
(Chicago: The Puddin’Head Press, 2009), pp. 8-9.

Helen Degen Cohen has also just published another highly regarded book of poetry, On a Good Day One Discovers Another Poet



JANUARY CHALLENGE:

The challenge for January is to think about your childhood and write a poem about a particularly poignant memory (happy, sad, scary, or whatever you come up with). You may, of course, take poetic license and change names, details, locations, and so on. Let the memory lead you into poetry and let the poem take you where it will. The poem, however, must be based on your own childhood, not a reflection on childhood in general, or on other children.

In addition to the poems above, you may draw inspiration from "My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow" by Robert Lowell (In his Selected Poems: Expanded Edition: Including selections from Day by Day), “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas (n The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Revised Edition [with CD]). Christopher Merrill’s poem “Childhood,” has an interesting combination of realistic detail and more emotional (and mysterious) content. You can find the poem in his book, Watch Fire.

You may use a form (label it as a sonnet, triolet, or whatever), or write in free verse. Poems of 40 or fewer lines have a better chance of being selected. I still have not figured out how to post shaped poems or poems with indents, so it is best to submit a poem with every line starting on the left margin. The winning poem or poems will be posted before the end of January. Sign your poem with your name as you would like it to appear on the blog if you are a winner. Winners retain rights to their own poems. Send your poem to me at wildamorris [at] Ameritech[dot] net (substitute the @ sign for “at” and . for [dot], and don’t leave any spaces. Or you can access my Facebook page and send the poem in a message. Be sure to give me your e-mail address so I can respond.

Challenge Deadline: January 15, 2010.

©2010 Wilda Morris

December Challenge Winner

There were several good attempts at providing advice for the new year: advice to a husband, to a nephew, and to people in general. The winning poem describes life through a series of metaphors: a movie in fast-forward, musical chairs, a tunnel, and so on. The judges weren’t totally convinced by the title and end line, but nevertheless, the poem offers some good advice. Congratulations to Jason Sturner for submitting the following poem:


Trout Swimming Upstream for Nickels & Dimes

The world outside my window
moves like someone hit fast-forward
and broke off the pause button.

We race for our seats
on musical chair mornings,
jump in the ring with clocks.

But today my soul pinched me,
woke me up with a beautiful, simple idea,
and I'm here to share.

My friends,
one word
foraged
into a sword—

"Enough!"

Like drought in a rose garden,
like sour on a sweet kiss:

We tolerate too much,
we tunnel drive through life;
each of us holding an entire world on our shoulders.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can spread our arms, ride the wind, enjoy life.
Remind ourselves that money is not air,
that computers will never hug us.

So write a list of things you love,
things that make life good for you.
And tape it to your forehead if you must.

For a daily pinch is a daily reminder
that you're NOT a fish
swimming upstream for peanuts.

Jason Sturner

The consulting judge this month was Beth Staas, President of Poets and Patrons of Chicago. There is a link to the Poets and Patrons Website on this blog (upper right).

Watch for a new poetry challenge to be posted on or near the first of January.

Happy New Year!

December Poetry Challenge

According to the calendar most widely used in the Western world, a new year will begin on January 1. Traditionally New Year’s Day has been a time for celebrating and for making resolutions. The two poems below, both by Wisconsin writers, are not written as resolutions; they provide advice to others as they begin the new year.

This Year ...

Borrow from the Universe
an elixir of choice.
Interpret your dreams
as Daniel did for Nebuchadnezzar.
Startle your partner
with open mouth kisses.
Memorize poems and
think in foreign phonemes.
Shake the shoulders of silence
while you deadhead the dianthus.
Harvest forgiveness and
bundle the benefits of doubt.
Crumble purple lavender
into an alchemy.
Coax the bell of morning glories
to ring mid-afternoon.
Clap the hens from the
cool weather garden.
Feel the flesh of words
as you pray without ceasing.

Jenna Rindo

First published in Free Verse.


Jenna Rindo suggests that we have choices in how we meet the new year--why would one give advice if one did not believe that? Alliteration, assonance, interesting images and Biblical allusions enrich her poem. The juxtapositions of lines (such as moving from interpreting your dreams to startling your partner) are interesting. Beginning with the ninth line, Rindo uses a lot of gardening (or farming) imagery.


All Year Long

This year as the world comes apart…bit by bit
day after day…give your heart away
remembering that the watered-down light
of the moon is stronger than darkness

This year when the lines in your face outnumber
those in the palm of your hand or the ones
you meant to put on paper…do not have them notarized

When the lock on your door finally gives out
and everyone comes to sleep in your living room
turn over the deed for your house to the first one
willing to make coffee or a pot of soup

This year when you plant your garden…hold the seeds
carefully in the womb of your mouth…Spit them
one by one into the welcoming earth in the name
of everything you have done or failed to do

This year as the world becomes larger and you shrink
to the size of the small winter sapling in your backyard
know that the skeletons of trees still hold the breath
of your grandmother and need no disclaimer.

Ellen Kort

Wisconsin Poet’s Calendar: 1999, edited by Yvette Viets Flaten (Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, 1998), p. 125.


Ellen Kort, who was the first poet laureate of Wisconsin, generally does not use punctuation. She substitutes extra spaces where other poets might use periods, commas or dashes in the middle of a line. Unfortunately, blogspot will not print extra spaces, so Kort gave me permission to substitute the dots.

Kort’s poem seems to assume that, to some extent at least, the world will come apart. Indeed, all of us experience disappointment, loss, and even tragedy, often through no fault of our own. We have no choice about that. But Kort, like Rindo, reminds us that we can choose how to respond, and find meaning in our lives as we give our hearts away. This idea provides a central focus for the poem.

“All Year Long” has rich metaphors and images. It makes excellent use of repetition, without overdoing it (note that the third stanza – the one in the middle – does not use the repeated phrase “This year”). Kort also makes good use of comparisons: “the watered-down / light of the moon” is compared with darkness; the number of lines on your face versus those on your palm; the world growing as you shrink. There is also the juxtaposition at the end of the fourth stanza of “everything you have done” with what you have failed to do.

December Poetry Challenge

After reading these poems, I’m determined to coax those morning glory bells to ring—and to appreciate “watered-down light.” I’m also wondering what advice I might offer to others, advice that might make help 2010 a memorable year.

The December poetry challenge is to write a poem of advice for the new year. It may be advice for anyone who might read it, advice to a particular group (department store clerks; members of a sports team; poets or novelists; students at your school or those with whom you work; all the members of your church, mosque, synagogue or temple; etc.) or individual (such as your spouse or children, or a new-born). Or perhaps you could combine the New Year’s resolution idea with the advice idea, and write advice for yourself. You may use a form (other than a shaped poem, considering that blogspot doesn’t accommodate the needed spaces) or free verse. Your poem may be serious or humorous. Just make it poetic and 30 or fewer lines!

Entries must be submitted by December 15. Submitting a poem implies permission for the poem to be posted. Authors retain ownership of their own work.

Submit your poem through the comment feature below (be sure to include your name and e-mail address), through my Facebook page, or via e-mail (remove the spaces from the following address: wildamorris @ ameritech . net). At least one winning entry will be posted on “Wilda Morris’s Poetry Blog.”


© 2009 Wilda Morris