“And now for our (optional) prompt from Napowrimo: “Today’s we’d like to challenge you to write a poem rooted in ‘weird wisdom,’ by which we mean something objectively odd that someone told you once, and that has stuck with you ever since.”
Oh, how I struggled with this prompt! Truth is, all that weird wisdom has stuck! So here’s the poem for day 6!
Bird singing in the morning!
The Staying Power of Weird Wisdom
The trunkful of weird wisdom
that I learned as a child never emptied.
My mother rivalled a character in a Flannery O’Connor story
with her wealth of proverbs, warnings, and clichés.
Maybe I lacked a dress for the prom, or a hat for Easter,
or a book for school, but never a lack of weird wisdom.
Necessity is the mother of invention, (how many times did I hear?)
A leopard doesn’t change its spots.
A fool and her money . . .(yes a litany of these!),
a bird in the hand, a journey of a thousand miles. . .,
Oh, and “all that glitters isn’t gold!”
Beggars can’t be choosy, daughter.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, now!
How many times?
Don’t cross that bridge ‘til you come to it?
If wishes were horses, we would all take a ride,
young lady! But the weirdest wisdom
of all that puzzles me still:
“Sing before breakfast; cry before night.”
What? We should all sing like birds.
Sing to sunrise! Sing to the morning!
Sing to the new day!
Moral of the story:
Some wisdom is not only weird, but better left unsaid!
“Friday is here, and so is the fifth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.
Now, let’s get to our optional prompt! Today we’d like you to start by taking a look at Alicia Ostriker’s poem, “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog.” Now try your hand at writing your own poem about how a pair or trio very different things would perceive of a blessing or, alternatively, how these very different things would think of something else (luck, grief, happiness, etc).”
Today’s prompt from Napowrimo (thank you Maureen Thorson!): “Our (optional) prompt for the day challenges you to write a poem in which you take your title or some language/ideas from The Strangest Things in the World. First published in 1958, the book gives shortish descriptions of odd natural phenomena, and is notable for both its author’s turn of phrase and intermittently dubious facts.”
Because, truly, I do think it a little strange that the manatee, or its cousin the dugong, ever looked like a mermaid to the lonely sailors of the sea, I chose this idea from the “strangest things” book.
From the book, I chose the entry on “Mammal Prototypes of the ‘Mermaid’”
“The prototypes of the “mermaids” of legend are among the least known of all animals to naturalists because of their underwater habitat and their secretive habits. They are the manatees of the Caribbean region and the dugongs of the Indian Ocean. They constitute the only remaining species of the serenia, or moon creatures, distant relatives of the elephant. Both have a somewhat human facial appearance. They feed standing upright in the water, their flippers held out before them like arms. Sometimes the females hold their calves in these flippers. Seen from a distance, they have a curiously human appearance, which may account for the many reports of mermaids and mermen.”
And though, I think the sailors must have been hallucinating to spot a manatee or dugong and see a mermaid (less often a merman), I wrote my poem in response to this entry. And because I spent a good part of my day in the dentist office, I decided to write a short poem, called a Triolet.
Not sure that was a timesaver, but here’s my triolet and poem for day 4. That intricate rhyme scheme with two refrains is a challenge indeed!
“The dream world and the real world are the same.” (Remedios Varo)
Image Credit: National Galleries of Scotland
Today, Napowrimo has challenged me to write a surreal prose poem. Wonderful! It gave me the opportunity to do what I love to do–learn more about women artists, in this case, surreal women artists of Mexico. Check out this article in Art News if you would like to learn more about this intriguing artist, Remedios Varo and her artist friends.
And here is my prose poem for today:
Encounter (Encuentro)
The artist encounters her past self. Remedios tips open the lid of the coffin-like box & haunting eyes peer out. She does not look in. She seems uninterested in the self of her past soon to be on the shelf with the others. Her cape flows blue-gray and ragged, and even her skeletal fingers poise ready, but her new self has yet to be revealed. The artist gazes beyond now. She encounters life, death, and transformation as she waits to drop the lid on her old self. Who is the new Varos she sees in the distance?
Jacquelyn Markham (4/3/2024)
Remedios Varos, artist 1908-1963
I really appreciate that the National Gallery of Scotland is acquiring more works by women surrealists. And always, much credit goes to the National Museum of Women in the Arts for its contributions to women’s art. Thank you NMWA for featuring Varos in exhibits and events and for all you do for women in the arts!
Jacquelyn Markham, poet & writer, author of Rainbow Warrior, Finishing Line Press (2023), Peering Into the Iris: An Ancestral Journey and China Baby, among other titles. She offers writing & creativity guidance through Moonflower Mentoring.
Here we go, poets and poetry lovers! Day one of the poem-a-day challenge and National Poetry Month! So exciting! Read more about it here.
Prompt: Write, without consulting the book, a poem that recounts the plot, or some portion of the plot, of a novel that you like but haven’t read in a long time (compliments of NaPoWriMo)! My today’s effort below.
Ocean moon, photo by the poet
Edna & the Sea
When Edna left the shore &
plunged into the salty blue,
her body slid through breaking waves,
a silvery fish, sunlight flashing freedom.
When Edna left the shore behind
she lost everything—except herself.
When she left the shore, she found herself,
as solid as a whale, breathing air in bursts,
then diving deep, deep, deep into the azure sea.
When Edna returned to
her city home, everything she lost
was there—Victorian rooms, silver trays
with calling cards, tea sets, & callers at the door,
but where was she?
Edna felt the pull of the ocean,
slipped from the shallow talk & society,
she felt the waves wash her ankles,
a moment’s hesitation before the plunge,
like a fish freed from the hook,
frolicking in viridian sea, its escape barely seen.
Jacquelyn Markham 4/1/2024
This plot poem is inspired by Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. If you haven’t read the book, you are missing a classic novel that reveals so much about the lives of women in the 19th century. And frankly, even into the 20th (and maybe even today for some women), Chopin’s words can evoke a “tower moment.”
“Pick a word from the list below. Then write a poem titled either “A [your word]” or “The [your word]” in which you explore the meaning of the word, or some memory you have of it, as if you were writing an illustrative/alternative definition.” The list:
Cage
Ocean
Time
Cedar
Window
Sword
Flute
Of course, as a flutist, I certainly must select “flute”!
Can empathy change our world? Can poetry create empathy? I believe the answer to these questions is yes. I would like to share a poem with you that attempts to create empathy for one little island girl who is forced to leave her home–just one of the many stories from my work in progress, Bikini Laments.
Bikini Laments (and Rainbow Warrior, the shorter collection that includes some Bikini Atoll poems) is a series of poems about the impact of atomic testing on the South Pacific islands. The short 1946 film below gives some background on this atomic testing that occurred in the 1940s and 1950s.
My poetry in this collection attempts to create empathy for those whose life and culture on Bikini Atoll were lost. “A Child Speaks to Libokra” tells the story of one little island girl taken from her home as I imagined it. One of the poems from Rainbow Warrior(Finishing Line Press, 2023), it was first published by Hawaii Pacific Review as you see it here.
The shocking story of Bikini Atoll & the Atomic Testing in a brief film:
According to Psychology Today, “Empathy is a sense that you can understand and share the feelings of another.” As I wrote “A Child Speaks to Libokra,” I became the child. I felt I was leaving my palm trees, my sister’s grave, and my simple home behind to board a big ship to the unknown.
In “Myth of the Infinite Sea,” also from Rainbow Warrior, the poet/reader becomes Eagle, hopefully to create empathy for the avian world that experiences oil on the water (specifically, in this poem, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill).
Could our world be saved from violence, war and environmental disasters with more empathy?
If so, I want to do all I can to encourage empathy with my art.
October was as full as its Harvest Moon as it always is in our part of the world after the heat breaks.
I have missed my interaction with friends and readers at Poet Voice, but I am back!
Some of my time was devoted to the 8th Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, held every year around the late Pat Conroy’s birthday. I was fortunate this year to take part in a Poets Panel with the amazing sister and fellow poets, Ellen Malphrus, Jennifer Bartell Boykin, and Tim Conroy. What an honor!
Though I was away from Poet Voice for a bit, I also vowed to keep hope alive in my own way with a poem, proving that “poetry matters,” the topic of the poets panel I referred to above.
Over time, my most popular blog post was in April during the poem-a-day challenge in honor of National Poetry Month. I wrote and posted “Yellow Celosia of Hope” which was chosen by Maureen Thorson as featured poem of the day on April 27, 2023. (There are many ways to participate in the annual Poem-a-day Challenge; I have been enjoying the camaraderie and prompts on NaPoWriMo, founded by Maureen.
On the April day that I wrote the poem, I did plant a yellow Celosia with “golden feathers,/hope waving from my garden.”
Alas, the hottest summer ever was hard on the beautiful yellow feathery thing! And now, the world over, we need hope more than ever, so I planted two yellow celosias in my fall garden. They are annuals, but in warmer climates may act like a perennial. I will nurture them and replace the symbol of hope as needed. Here again, is the poem:
Yellow Celosia of Hope
I lose hope when the world
loses compassion.
I lose hope when I lose myself or
a belief in the invisible.
I lose hope when I don’t see
love, a solution, or an end.
When I lose hope,
I listen for my heartbeat.
I listen for the wren
announcing dawn.
I look for pinpoints of light
sparkling on the river,
galaxies in the dark sky.
When I lose hope,
I listen to music—loud.
I read the poets, I eat, I drink,
I pace, I cry, I imagine
hope returning.
I cook rice.
I bake biscuits.
I sweep the floor.
I plant Yellow Celosias,
golden feathers,
hope waving from my garden.
Jacquelyn Markham
Dear readers and friends, what ways do you keep hope alive in your lives?
Can we all envision peace together and make a difference as Baba Jolie suggests in her 11/11 portal pick-a card-short video?
Baba Jolie speaks of envisioning peace together
And poets, if you believe as poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997) wrote in her poem, “Making Peace,” that “poets must give us imagination of peace,” then please fire up your imaginations like this Flamma Golden Celosia and let it burn with hope for world peace and harmony in our everyday lives.
The waxing moon is in Capricorn until around midnight, July 31, ET (NY) and slides into Aquarius on August 1, Lunar Lammas, a super full moon, the first of two August supermoons! So, wow! lunar energy in abundance as we wind down the summer in full Leo season (in the western hemisphere.)
A new moon rises in Leo on August 16, great energy for focusing on implementing your vision for yourself.
Before we spin around August and enter the moon in Aquarius though, we have a little time to finalize tasks of the Capricorn moon, including setting clear short-term goals (astrological guidance from the We’Moon calendar, learn more here: We’Moon). So, how about a plan for yourself and your creativity?
Does this sound dreary to you creatives out there? Does the phrase Strategic Plan make your eyes glaze over? I understand, but it’s really more rewarding & creative than you might think. Some years ago as an arts consultant for Kentucky Peer Advisory Network (KPAN), I traveled to arts organizations large and small and assisted them with grants, board development, marketing, and yes, strategic planning! That was a great gig except for the driving on mountain roads without guard rails and the long roads to western Kentucky (I was living in Lexington at the time). But, I digress. As an arts consultant, however, I did learn the importance of having a plan to focus your creativity.
My way of making this process of creating a Strategic Plan more fun is to think of it as a *Vision* for my creative life. So, still in the middle of moon in Capricorn, I set about to work on my Vision Plan and finished the details as the clock slipped into today, July 31, while the moon is still in Capricorn.
What about you, dear readers? Want to give it a try? I focused my plan on short term goals from now until December 2023. Here’s the step-by-step process:
Step 1: Write your vision statement. Your vision statement is futuristic and should inspire you. Mine is only three sentences long and I’ve written it in gold ink at the top of a new page in my journal.
Step 2: Next, write your mission statement which differs from but grows out of your vision statement. There are many resources on this process of writing a mission statement (search Strategic Plan) but think simply. What is it you do or want to do everyday? Focus on the present. Keep it brief.
Step 3: Now, short term goals that fit within your vision and your mission. I settled on five, but worked through several pages of writing to see the difference in the goals and the tasks it would take to accomplish them. You could focus on three (a nice number) or more if you are energetic, but I suggest no more than seven. Can some of the short term goals be moved to long term goals, for example?
Step 4: The details, the tasks, the baby steps! What tasks will be needed to meet these goals? (You can break up tasks to smaller baby steps, too.)
Step 5:Create a timeline and in January 2024, review and revise for the new year!
Now that you have carved out the details of your Vision Plan, enjoy the three lunations of August and start to collaborate and network while the moon is full in Aquarius. And always, always, celebrate the fullness and beauty of the full moon and your own accomplishments coming to fruition.
And remember to celebrate your vision plan for the creativity in your life!
This story is a response to a question from Jeff Brown who on the SC Writers Association Facebook feed asked about our favorite piece of writing. I responded:
“I have never thought of having a “favorite piece” of my writing. I write it and it has a life of its own. But, I suppose it would have to be “Story Circle,” a little known and unpublished feminist choreopoem I wrote while at Wolfpen Writers Colony in Prostpect, Kentucky.”
That residency was a month long stay awarded by the Kentucky Women’s Foundation who continues to support women, for example, with the Sallie Bingham Award. That month at Wolf Pen literally changed my life.
So, while I was busy musing on Jeff’s first question, he asked how that experience changed my life. Now, that sent me down another spiral path and here is my musing on that question.
So, other than the obvious—a month away from responsibilities and camaraderie with other writers– it was a combination of cosmic experiences that changed me. Under the dark skies of Kentucky, bonfires throughout the night, a studio far from the living quarters (where my room overlooked a spiral garden), and a library of stimulating material all played a part.
“Story Circle,” my original chorepoem, is about healing & transformation, so the writing of it was healing. Though I had been an advocate for women since the 70s, I began to focus on healing and empowerment in my life, writing, and advocacy.
Poet leading a healing chant in the 1990’s
So when I returned to Athens where I taught at The University of Georgia for 12 years, I was driving down the road when the words “Spiral Dynamics” came to me even though I didn’t know what they meant at the time. Shortly, I founded Spiral Dynamics Women’s Resource and Cultural Exchange. In the 90s women’s studies programs were struggling to be born. Of course, I was on the steering committee for Women’s Studies courses at UGA, but wheels turn slowly in academia and I was impatient, so I founded Spiral Dynamics to promote women’s endeavors–in writing, art, music, and business. Spiral Dynamics never technically become a nonprofit but I simply did whatever I wanted to do, for example, raising money to bring the powerful Luisah Teish, Yoruban priestess to town. It was a memorable time to those who attended with Teish (as she likes to be called) leading us in healing and ceremony.
Spiral Dynamics was quite dynamic for years until it was time to transform the energy into something new. I was hired to implement an SBA grant for a women’s business center, coming full circle since the job was back in Kentucky! I was not an MBA; I was a poet and a professor, but by virtue of my work with women’s businesses through Spiral Dynamics, I was hired. I cut my ties with Georgia and headed into a completely different chapter of my life all from the vision of the spiral garden under my window at the Hopscotch House (Wolf Pen Writers Colony).
And that’s the short story! To be continued in my memoir.
Poet Voice 