Tag: Academy of American Poets

Day 20 Found by a Future Scientist PAD 2023

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To appease my grumbling muse, I decided to delve into a stanza pattern to write today’s poem.  The “Terza Rima” (a poem with interweaving rhyming triplets or tercets) is a form that poets have used for long poems or as a stand alone short 3 line poem.  One famous example of Terza Rima with three tercets and a final couplet is Shelley’s of “Ode to the West Wind.” It has a specific rhyme pattern that goes like this: 1,2,1; 2,3,2; 3,4,3;4,5,4 and the couplet uses the rhyme sound from the central line of the preceding triplet, so it goes 5, 5.

Shelley’s poem has five sections, however, and you may want to check it out here.

Below is my poem, “Found by a Future Scientist,” that responds to Napowrimo’s prompt “Have you ever heard someone wonder what future archaeologists, whether human or from alien civilization, will make of us? Today, I’d like to challenge you to answer that question in poetic form, exploring a particular object or place from the point of view of some far-off, future scientist? The object or site of study could be anything from a “World’s Best Grandpa” coffee mug to a Pizza Hut, from a Pokemon poster to a cellphone.”

Found by a Future Scientist

What thing is this,

a pendulum moving to and fro

in perfect rhythm, yet tedious?

The weighted piece—a rod of sorts—must go

ticking, tocking, ticking, tocking torture.

My science sees no purpose in this show.

Back and forth ticking I must endure

as I study this strange artifact.

In this task, my expertise looks amateur.

Yet, after hours, days, months—to be exact,

I warm to this past piece as treasured bric-a-brac.

            Jacquelyn Markham (4/20/2023)

Day 16 erasure/negation poem   PAD 2023

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Affairs of the Heart Claims & Warnings

Gypsy Cat fortune teller (credit JohnLund.com)

The Academy of American Poets defines “Erasure poetry” as “a form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains.” (poets.org)

It seems to me that erasure poem could be considered a form of “negation”–the challenge of today’s prompt explained by Maureeen at Napowrimo:  “Today’s prompt is a poem of negation – yes (or maybe, no), I challenge you to write a poem that involves describing something in terms of what it is not, or not like.”

To write this poem, I grabbed the text from a bottle of hand sanitizer and wrote not about hand sanitizer but about past love affairs. (Does that qualify as a negation poem?)

Affairs of the Heart Claims & Warnings

That love affair killed 99.99% of my

heart chakra. Based on a

comparative study, he succeeded

eradicating most of my heart strings.

For external use only, the warning reads!

Keep those affairs outside of yourself.

Keep out of the reach of your inner child.

Do not internalize narcissistic, cruel, or

indifferent behavior. If a severe

reaction occurs, stop & ask a

fortune teller if you should continue.

She may predict next time, with these

precautions, the affair will destroy

only 55.55% of your heart.

Jacquelyn Markham (4/16/2023)

Day 14 Parody or Satire Rewrite    PAD 2023

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (poets.org)

Today’s prompt is another rewrite.  Thorson says: “And now for our (optional) daily prompt. Hopefully, this one will provide you with a bit of Friday fun. Today, I challenge you to write a parody or satire based on a famous poem. It can be long or short, rhymed or not. But take a favorite (or unfavorite) poem of the past, and see if you can’t re-write it on humorous, mocking, or sharp-witted lines. You can use your poem to make fun of the original (in the vein of a parody), or turn the form and manner of the original into a vehicle for making points about something else (more of a satire – though the dividing lines get rather confused and thin at times).”

My attempt at the prompt on day 14 has an interesting twist. The poem is not so famous, but the poet is—Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  In 1856, Barrett Browning published Aurora Leigh, a “novel in verse” that follows the title character, an aspiring poet, through several pot-boiling twists. In one revealing passage, Aurora’s cousin and would-be suitor, Romney Leigh, summarizes his attitude toward her and women writers of that era in a passage that I quote below. I rewrote that passage.

So, I rewrote the poem from a feminist perspective and titled it “Woman Poet Extraordinaire”

Woman Poet Extraordinaire

Therefore, this same world

that you understand and influence

with your strength and courage will

always be changed by you and  

women of the world. Women brave,

strong, and at work in the world

will always change it by their very presence.

You are more than a doting mother and a wife!

You are more than a sublime Madonna ,

a seductress, or an enduring saint.

You are divine!

You are woman!

You are leader, artist, writer,

inventor, healer, builder.  

You are poet extraordinaire!

            Jacquelyn Markham (4/14/2023)

Here’s the original in which her cousin addresses her, knowing of her aspirations to be a poet:

Therefore, this same world
Uncomprehended by you must remain
Uninfluenced by you. Women as you are,
Mere women, personal and passionate,
You give us doting mothers, and chaste wives.
Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints!
We get no Christ from you,—and verily
We shall not get a poet, in my mind.

The Poetry Foundation explains: “As starkly sexist as the above passage might seem to contemporary readers, the idea that women and female experience were incompatible with poetry continued to hold sway for the next 100 years, until second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s brought a political and cultural watershed. Women fought for equal treatment and civil rights; meanwhile, women poets created structures to support one another while profoundly changing poetry itself.” (www.poetryfoundation.org)

We only have to look at the last two United States Poet Laureates to see “women poets extraordinaire”! Currently, Ada Limon and former, Joy Harjo. Two of my favorite poets.