Homage to a favorite poet!
What a wonderful day in National Poetry Month when a poet gets to revisit a favorite poet in responding to the daily prompt of Napowrimo (National Poetry Writing Month) or as we now call it Na/Glopowrimo (National/Global Poetry Writing Month). You can write on your own sweet time or you can write along with Maureen Thorsen at napowrimo.net, Stafford Challenge (and write a poem everyday for a year!) at this link: https://staffordchallenge.com/ or many others as you choose.
What’s important is to express yourself! In our case, in the form of poetry!
So today, on Day Seventeen, Maureen challenged us to use a poem by a favorite poet as a springboard for our own. Be sure to visit that link to get all the details.
So, I selected a modern American poet I’ve long adored: Hilda Doolittle, known–if known at all–as H.D. Imagiste!
If you would like to know more about H.D.’s remarkable literary life & achievements, go here and learn from the “Literary Ladies Guide.”
But to my poem! Late last night after diving deeply into some of my favorite poems in my well-worn copy of the H. D. Collected Poems on my desk, I selected “Evening.” I post it in its entirety below my response to her poem.
Evening
The light passes
from ridge to ridge,
from flower to flower—
the hepaticas, wide-spread
under the light
grow faint—
the petals reach inward
the blue tips bend
toward the bluer heart
and the flowers are lost./
The cornel-buds are still white
but shadows dart
from the cornel roots—
black creeps from root to root
each leaf
cuts another leaf on the grass,
shadow seeks shadow,
then both leaf
and leaf-shadow are lost.
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)
Another day in the life of Poet Voice, aka Jacquelyn Markham, poet; “thinking about poetry everyday,“
Poet Voice 