September 2022 Winners: Mysteries

 

River Scene by Salomon van Ruysdael

It was interesting to read all the poems on the theme of “mysteries” submitted this month. Some focused on mystery stories. Others, including the first place winner, were related to the mysteries of life

Meditation by the River

 I am the rain
            becoming a river;
I am the mystery
            of transformation.

I am a leaf
            floating downriver;
I am the mystery
            of transportation.

I am a rock
            in the middle of the river;
I am the mystery
            of time’s abrasions.

I am my tears
            dissolving in the river;
I am the mystery
            of restoration.

~ Jane Ellen Glasser

Glasser’s poem is well-structured and profound. The mysteries in this poem call us to think deeply. Glasser does a good job of combining abstract ideas with concrete objects. I read all the poems and let them sit for a few days, but this one stayed on my mind.

 

A Digression:

Before moving on to the second-place poem, I have a few comments to add to my previous discussion about the Nancy Drew mysteries. Many people I have spoken with this month have happy memories of reading that set of mysteries. My husband told me when he was a kid, he thought the Nancy Drew books were much better than the Hardy Boys series!

I had hoped to photograph some of my old Nancy Drew books for the post at the beginning of the month but failed to find any. I may have passed them on to someone else. I checked out four of the mysteries from my local library and photographed them. I decided to read one before returning them and was soon engrossed in The Message in the Hollow Oak. When I got to the chapter where Nancy was in St. Louis visiting the Gateway Arch, I realized the original, written in the 1930s could not have mentioned the Arch since it was not built until the 1960s. I asked the library to find me a copy of the novel before it’s revision in the 1960s because I wanted to see what Nancy had seen in St. Louis in the original.

In the 1935 edition, not only did Nancy not visit the Arch—she did not go to St. Louis. Most of the action takes place along the Canadian border because Nancy had won a small piece of property in Canada. It turns out that the “revised” version of The Message in the Hollow Oak is not really what I would call a revision. It is an entirely different story. A different plot, and a very different history to the use of the oak for leaving messages! Of course, Nancy and her father and her friends George and Bess are all there. I enjoyed reading both.

 

The second-place poem is by Paula Lambert, who will be familiar to readers of The Poetry Challenge from her previous wins.

The Hypochondriac’s Question
to the Woman with Synesthesia

If seven is blue,
what’s dark blue, indigo, navy?
Is six-and-a-half a cloud-filled sky?

The pain in my side is an empty house.
There’s nobody home. The pain is here,
on my left. My ribcage is a birdcage.
There’s a sparrow inside. The doctor
doesn’t understand. I thought you might.

I heard you say your doorbell smells
like bacon. Mine smells like a wound.
It doesn’t ring very often. It smells like
undressing. Not taking off your clothes—
like lifting a bandage. Like stagnation
and healing at the same time.

If seven is blue, what’s dark blue, indigo,
melancholy? Sometimes what smells
sweet is so sweet I can feel the sticky
on my fingers. Sometimes burnt toast
makes me cry. The doctor doesn’t
understand. The nurse just purses
her lips. I thought it seemed like,
maybe, you’d understand.

The pain in my chest is a birdcage. There’s
a sparrow inside. When we were children,
we were taught to shoot sparrows in the barn.
It was how we brought down flight.
A barn is a big empty house. There’s nobody
home but the sparrow inside.

I wondered, could you tell me, if the number
seven is blue, how do you calculate sky?

~ Paula J. Lambert

This poem was originally published in Lambert’s book, The Sudden Seduction of Gravity (Full/Crescent Press 2012). 

Lambert’s poem is unique. Synesthesia, a condition in which the stimulation of one of the senses results in experiencing another of the senses. In this poem, Lambert ties the mysteries of synesthesia with medical mysteries often labeled as hypochondria. It is likely that many people who have been considered hypochondriacs over the years actually were suffering from unidentified illnesses, such as chronic fatigue syndrome or Fibromyalgia.

 

Winning poets retain copyright on their poems.

 

Honorable Mentions:

“Wikipedia Bronde And The Case Of The Missing Multiverse” by Lara Dolphin
“Where Memories Hide” by Christy Schwan
“The Mystery of the 13 Clues” by Karen A VandenBos
“Found Objects #2” by Lennart Lundh

 

Bios:

A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mom of four amazing kids. Her first chapbook, In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, was published by Alien Buddha Press. Her most recent chapbook, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, is available from Dancing Girl Press. 

Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, such as The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Georgia Review. In the past she served as the poetry critic for The Virginian-Pilot, poetry editor for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founder of the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry for Light Persists (2006), and the Poetica Publishing Chapbook Contest for The Long Life (2011). Jane Ellen Glasser: Selected Poems(2019), Staying Afloat during a Plague (2021). and Crow Songs (2021) are her recent collections. To learn more about the poet and her work, visit www.janeellenglasser.com.

Paula J. Lambert is an award-winning poet from Columbus, Ohio. Her most recent collection is The Ghost of Every Feathered Thing (Future Cycle 2022). Learn more at paulajlambert.weebly.com. 

Lennart Lundh is a poet, photographer, short-fictionist, and historian. His work has appeared internationally since 1965.

Christy Schwan is a native Hoosier author/poet living in Wisconsin. She's a rock hound, wild berry picker, wildflower seeker, astronomy studier, and quiet sports lover of kayaking, canoeing, snowshoeing and loon spotting. Her work has been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Museletter, Ariel Anthology, 8142 Review, Wisconsin Poet's Calendar (2022 and 2023), and Bramble Lit Mag.

Once upon a time, Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI. Her youth was nourished by books and writing. When adulthood opened the door, she was detoured to working in health care and obtained her PhD in Holistic Health. She tumbled into the realm of retirement landing on her feet and was reunited with her creative spark. She can now be found contributing to two online writing groups where she unleashes her imagination and trusts her pen to take her where she needs to go. Her writing has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Verse-Virtual, The Rye Whiskey Review and Sweetycat Press Anthologies while some of her photographs have been published in Blue Heron Review.

 

 

 

© Wilda Morris

 

 

 

 

September 2022 Challenge: Mysteries

My mother was just a few days short of her thirteenth birthday when the first Nancy Drew mystery—The Secret of the Old Clock—was published in April 1930. Mother read as many of the series as she could get her hands on. After I had worked my way through the Bobbsey Twin books and The Five Little Peppers, and was reading The Little House on the Prairie, she introduced me to the favorite sleuth of her teen years. The series rapidly became done of my favorites, too.

The Nancy Drew books were all published under the pen name, Carolyn Keene, though several writers contributed to the series. In 1959, the Stratemeyer company began a project of revising the books for a new generation, including updating language usage and plots, removing racial stereotypes and, in some cases, condensing books. The series took on new life. Nancy Drew books have been translated to more that 45 languages, gaining fans around the world.

 

At Nine

Under the covers,
a miracle happens,
not sleep, not the warmth of blankets,
nor mere unconsciousness,
night’s temporary paralysis,
but a book—
Nancy Drew, super-sleuth,
opening in a small hand
whose mate holds a flashlight.

After a day at school
when she got all A’s
but nobody asked—
mother’s had one drink too many,
and father is busy paying the bills—
there’s no one to tell
how full the moon looks
from her bedroom window,
or how sweetly a nightingale might sing
from a rooftop if this were England.

Huddled beneath the bedclothes,
she dives into a sea of strangeness,
finds a clue in a haunted house,
helps herself to cookies home-baked
by Hannah the housekeeper,
meets Bess, pleasingly plump,
and George, boyish as her name,
observes the occasional intrusions
of Ned Nickerson, the boyfriend.

Hearing a door slam
somewhere in the house,
she hunkers down further,
sniffing criminals and ghosts,
the scent of happiness
in a circle of light,
page after comforting page,
discovering the mystery
of the hidden staircase.

~ Donna Puccini

This poem, first published in Front Range Review, is from Jumping Off the Train by Donna Puccini (Windstorm Creative, 1997).

I like how mysteries and other fiction books provide another world for the reader, in this case, a child who needs an escape. This poem reminds me that I sometimes read with a flashlight hidden under my blankets! Maybe you did that, too.

 

Here is another take on the subject:

After Reading Too Many Mysteries

It’s a hard truth we learn from wild horses at Deception Point, where we found blood from the stone near the twisted root. On the Day of the Dead, we decide to solve the murder at the Pottawatomie Light, but have to deal with doctored evidence, hush money, road rage, birds of prey, the kiss of the bees, desert heat and even the girl with the dragon tattoo. We have much night work in a darker place. While other people sleep, we will listen to the silence; we shall not sleep. Children of the storm, we will follow the track of the cat, an endangered species. If the girl sleuth, whom we presumed innocent, is with child, we will face a firestorm; drive to the last precinct; learn if it was truly death in a tenured position and whether it was an acceptable loss. At dead midnight, we will enter locked rooms, turn seven dials, seek the secret of the old clock, check the arrangement of cards on the table. A flashback will give us total recall of all our yesterdays, including a cinnamon kiss, the falcon at the portal, and a dead madonna. We will develop a taste for death and leave with exit wounds.

~ Wilda Morris

This prose poem, which includes the titles of 50 mysteries (48 of which were on the shelves of a room in which I

 stayed for a few days in 2009), won a merit award from the League of Minnesota Poets in 2011, and was published in Voices on the Wind (November 2013).

 

The subject is broadened in this poem by Puccini:

Mysteries

We look at pictures of thinning bones.
The doctor uses words like
“Putting off the inevitable,”
“consult a specialist,”
“you’re doing all the right things.”

The doctor is kindly, and speaks the truth.
He respects the woman who disintegrates
before his very eyes, having seen
such things before. “Fractures.” “Pain.”
Substance becomes ash, the solid ephemeral.
He prefers the mystery of birth,
ponders his own children’s tiny limbs,
having embraced them this morning
before cereal and fruit.

I think of other mysteries:
web-footed men beckoning from hedgerows,
licorice allsorts coating the tongue black,
elves, trolls, deserted villages, déjà vu,
owls and banshees, dark wings flapping in a wood,
half-remembered nursery rhymes, galaxies,
a whistled piece of a tune, a lock with no key,
attic stairs, the missing ingredient in a pie,
lost umbrellas, misplaced sunglasses,
mice in the walls, black holes, a suitcase
that won’t open, the smell of smoke.

Puzzlement gathers itself for the final riddle.
Abracadabra does not work.
No spells, no charms.
A trail of breadcrumbs vanishes
like bone on a dexa-scan. Life is a little tune
played backwards. I must learn
to disappear
gracefully.

~ Donna Puccini

“Mysteries” was published in Journal of Medical Humanities and Ariel before appearing in Jumping Off the Train.

 

Kat Hutchinson’s poem, “The Anointing,” gives us another angle on mysteries:

The Anointing

We must've been twelve that summer,
launching into life with every dive
off the pier. You chose me with a whisper
and out we crept at midnight, silent,
risking dreaded phone calls home but
knowing the counselors had drunk
illicit beer and slept like the dead.

I can still hear the chirping cicadas, feel
leaves tickle my ankles as we followed
the path to the dock. A haze had settled
over the lake, the moon a woolen effigy
of itself casting an eerie glow. We
dipped our feet in the cool water.
Our legs touched, one spot of warm.

Did we talk at all before the moment
we heard soft splashes and saw, in the
distance, a white figure rising to beckon us?
You called her the Lady of the Lake
and said she had made us the Queens
of the Forest. We were not at all afraid.
We held hands in our invincibility.

Upon waking in the cabin, I was sure
it had been a dream. Or had I been
sleepwalking? You were nowhere
to be found. But then, as we loaded
onto buses for home, you saw me from
your window and winked, touching
your head where your crown had been.

Why is it in waning memory your name
has slipped away? Did the two of us
really go to the water's edge that night
and see the white-robed figure, believe
we were anointed as mythic beings?
Or were you just an inner part of me
emerging, sword drawn, in the darkness?

~ Kate Hutchinson

From A Matter of Dark Matter by Kate Hutchinson (Kelsay Books, 2022). It was first published in 3Elements Review (Fall 2019).

Poets published on this blog maintain copyright on their own poems.

 

The September Challenge:

The challenge for this month is a poem on the theme of mystery or mysteries. Your poem may be literal or metaphoric, serious or humorous. Think mystery books, mystery movies, scientific mysteries, historical or archaeological mysteries, etc. Your poem may be for children or for adults; if it is intended as a children's poem, please say that in your email. Note that the blog format does not accommodate shaped poems or long lines; if a poem has long lines, they are used, they have to be broken in two, with the second part indented (as in the poem “Lilith,” one of the May 2018 winners), or the post has to use small print. Note, too, that long poems are at a disadvantage. I am posting this challenge a day late, so the deadline will be September 16 instead of the 15^th.

Poems could be disqualified if the guidelines are not followed.

1-Title your poem unless it is in a form that discourages titles.

2-Single-space.

3-Put your submission in this order:

Your poem

Your name

Publication data if your poem was previously published

A brief third-person bio

Your email address – it saves me a lot of work if you put your email address at the end of your submission.

4-Please keep the poem on the left margin (standard 1” margin). Do not put any part of your submission on a colored background. No colored type or fancy font. Do not use a header or footer.

5-You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet. Poems already used on this blog are not eligible to win, but the poets may submit a different poem.

6-The deadline is September 16. Poems submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards. Winners are published on this blog.

7-Please don’t stray too from “family-friendly” language (some children and teens read this blog).

8- No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the end of the month whether or not your poem will be published.

9-The poet retains copyright on each poem. If a previously unpublished poem wins and is published elsewhere later, please give credit to this blog. I do not register copyright with the US copyright office, but by US law, the copyright belongs to the writer unless the writer assigns it to someone else.

10-Decision of the judge or judges is final.

11-If the same poet wins three months in a row (which has not happened thus far), he or she will be asked not to submit the following two months.

12-Send one poem only.

How to Submit Your Poem:

1-Send your poem to wildamorris4[at]gmail[dot]com (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). The poem must respond in some way to the specific challenge for the month.

2-Put “September Poetry Challenge Submission” FOLLOWED BY YOUR NAME in the subject line of your email. 

3-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.

4-Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment or both (Doc, Docx, rich text or plain text; no pdf files, please). 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 capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem).  Put everything in the order listed above.

6-Also, please do not use multiple spaces instead of punctuation 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 40 lines are preferred.

 

Bios:

Kate Hutchinson recently retired from a 34-year career of teaching high school English in Chicago's northwest suburbs. Her poetry and personal essays have appeared in dozens of publications and won numerous awards as well as three Pushcart Prize nominations. Her latest collection of poems, A Matter of Dark Matter, was released in 2022 by Kelsay Books. Kate is active with several local poetry organizations, including currently serving as president of Chicagoland Poets & Patrons and as assistant editor for the literary arts journal East on Central in Highland Park. To find more of her work and information about her new book, visit: https://poetkatehutchinson.wordpress.com/

Wilda Morris has just finished judging a poetry contest for a state poetry society and is co-editing a volume of poetry soon to be published by the Illinois State Poetry Society. Her second book of poetry, Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick, was published by Kelsay Books in 2019.

Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, ParisLitUp, Journal of Italian Translation, The Pedestal, Agenda, and other journals. Her latest book of poetry is Edges.

 

© Wilda Morris