Tag: woman poets

But who Remembers Her?

Poet VoiceLeave a comment

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!

Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961)

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.

H.D. in later years

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.)

Hepaticas, credit: https://www.theenglishgarden.co.uk/plants/flowers/how-to-grow-hepaticas/

Another day in the life of Poet Voice, aka Jacquelyn Markham, poet; “thinking about poetry everyday,“

Sweet Meadow & Orchard of Childhood

Poet VoiceLeave a comment
Credit: Artist, Emily Lowe; vareikafinearts.com

Hello out there! It is Day 13 of the Poem-a-Day for April, 2026. How are you doing with your poems, dear poets?

Today, our guru poet prompter, Maureen Thorsen at Napowrimo.net, asks us to try our hand at a prompt about a “cherished landscape.” (Please check out the link for more detail.) Here’s a recap:

“Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.” (napowrimo)

The “remembered cherished landscape” that I chose takes me back to a meadow & apple orchard in rural Michigan, when I was a mere child and loved to explore there. I used the tiniest hint of a rhyme in the last line of each stanza.

What a sweet memory, especially when our uncle would take us on hayrides through the cherry orchards up north & as a child at home, I would traverse the paths of Queen Anne’s Lace on my own.

Poetry is a wonderful way to revisit memories, or as William Wordsworth called them “spots of time.” Do you agree with this Romantic Poet of the 19th century? He found his memories of great use in his old age, as explained here: “These ‘spots’ are potent memories that can help a person grow and learn something about life and loss. When Wordsworth reflected upon experiences that he had with nature or with other people, he often used them as inspiration for his poetry.” (credit: https://wordsworth250.byu.edu/index.html_p=386.html)

Please feel free to comment. How does your memory serve you in writing, especially poetry?

Jacquelyn Markham aka Poet Voice!

National Poetry Month for April 2026 Begins!

Poet VoiceLeave a comment
Edna St. Vincent Millay at Work credit https://millay.org/

Poet Voice here, aka Jacquelyn Markham, poet. Welcome back to Poet Voice!!

Already participating in the Stafford Challenge (writing a poem a day all year), I am now overlapping with National Poetry Month, or as we know at Napowrimo.net, it is actually Na/GloPoWriMo (National/Global Poetry Writing Month)! Poets participate from all over the globe! Won’t you join us?

Napowrimo.net founder Maureen Thorson explains: “Each day, you’ll find here a new featured participant and daily resource. We’ll also have an optional daily prompt for those of you who find yourself in need of a little inspiration (or just like the additional challenge).” There are other sites, too, that provide prompts or you can simply begin on your own! Thank you Maureen (who founded Napowrimo in 2003!!) for your dedication to poets and National Poetry Month!

Happy 30th birthday to National Poetry Month, launched in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets! Below is this year’s poster, graced with words by our current U. S. Poet Laureate, Arthur Sze.

Rather than sharing my newly created poem from today, I am sharing a poem I wrote in another year during National Poetry Month.

“Taste of Sun: Eriobotrya japonica” was published by Petigru Review. Proof Poem-a-day can be productive! Enjoy!

https://petigrureview.wordpress.com/2025/10/27/taste-of-sun-eriobotrya-japonica-markham/

For All We Know: Villanelle

Poet VoiceLeave a comment

Day 11 Poem-a-Day Challenge

Although we were given the opportunity to write a “loose” villanelle today, I went with the traditional rhyme scheme. You will find the rules for this form linked below, courtesy of the Academy of American poets.

Rules of the Villanelle Form (from Academy of American Poets @ https://poets.org)

From NaPoWriMo, my favorite poem-a-day challenge website, Maureen Thorson offered this optional prompt: “Take a look at Kyle Dargan’s “Diaspora: A Narcolepsy Hymn.” This poem is a loose villanelle that uses song lyrics as its repeating lines (loose because it doesn’t rhyme).  Your challenge is, like Dargan, to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains.”

From Nina Simone’s Song “For All We Know” from NinaSimone.com

This might only be a dream *first refrain
Like the ripples, like the ripples in the stream *second refrain

Villanelle: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.

Where Trains Go

Poet VoiceLeave a comment

Like a train a track that stretches ahead, the days blur by and we are now on Day 9 of the April poem-a-day challenge, chugging away toward the middle of the month. Below is the optional prompt from Maureen at the NaPoWriMo poetry site. This prompt is all about Rhyme & Sound which brought to my mind, a train ride.

“And here’s our optional prompt for the day. Like music, poetry offers us a way to play with and experience sound. This can be through meter, rhyme, varying line lengths, assonance, alliteration, and other techniques that call attention not just to the meaning of words, but the way they echo and resonate against each other. For a look at some of these sound devices in action, read Robert Hillyer’s poem, Fog. It uses both rhyme and uneven line lengths to create a slow, off-kilter rhythm that heightens the poem’s overall ominousness. Today we’d like to challenge you to try writing a poem of your own that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths. For extra credit, reference a very specific sound, like the buoy in Hillyer’s poem.” Maureen Thorson

Thank you for visiting Poet Voice!

Jacquelyn ~

Begin Again!

Poet Voice4 Comments

Begin again. The law is clear

As geologic ages rear

     Through curling heat and stiffening cold,

     Lost ocean or fresh land unrolled,

We see the new forms still appear.

Nature’s best method triumphs here;

She builds not in one column sheer,

     But birth on birth as beads are told

     New life we find, rebuilt from old,

                  Begin again.

Each new day blossoms from the bier

Of night forgotten. Have no fear—

     Let us, who are the world, be bold,

     Take hope once more, take heart, take hold

Rise now with the new risen year—

                  Begin again.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

As we embark on the “unwritten pages of the new,” I draw on the optimism of the the writer, poet, activist, lecturer, artist, and ever industrious, Charlotte Perkins Gilman–who continues to inspire me today.

So much did she inspire me when I first discovered her large body of work that I spent another several decades collecting the poetry that was nearly inaccessible before my book (cover below). Now available at scattered US universities, such as Harvard, Columbia, Boston College, Library of Congress, as well as de la Sorbonne, The British Library, University of Oxford Library, and in Germany and Switzerland (check out Worldcatalog for more locations).

(Mellen Press, 2014)

So, dear readers, I hope you will join me in following Gilman’s inspiration. Her writings are full of poems and stories about beginning again and resolve.

“To keep my health!/To do my work!/To live!/To see to it I grow and gain and give!” (“Resolve”)

As we face the new opportunities and obstacles on our path, let’s adopt her resolve.

“Take hope once more, take heart, take hold” and “begin again”!

Jacquelyn Markham (January 3, 2025)

Dinosaur National Monument with the Milky Way galaxy photographed in the night sky. (Geologic ages explained.)

“New forms still appear”

Day 30 Heliodora: Gift of the Sun

Poet VoiceLeave a comment

What a wonderful time I have had with Maureen Thorson’s final prompt for 2024 poem-a-day challenge: “And now for our last prompt of the year – optional, as always! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend. . .” Partly because I have revisited one of my all time favorite poets, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), modern American poet. Partly because I have learned more about Heliodora, the first known woman astrologer, ca. 2nd or 3rd century.

H.D., as a young poet, courtesy Poetry Foundation
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/h-d

Heliodora: Gift of the Sun

for H.D., priestess/poet

Heliodora, gift of the sun,

Heliodora, astrologer, were you

the only one?*

You charted Saturn, Mercury & Venus,

on papyrus positioned Jupiter & Mars. 

Heliodora, you prophesied births &

guided lovers by planets, by sun.

Heliodora, oracle of constellations,

the moon and its phases. You foretold

mysteries of eclipses, solar & lunar.

H.D., you, too, seeker & seer of mysteries,

poet/priestess, you divined

the memory of Heliodora.

Did she speak to you in a dream?

Did she prophesy in your “writing on the wall?”**

Did Heliodora appear in your “overmind?”

Heliodora, the ancient one,

send me a message through the stars,

the planets, the constellations,

Andromeda, Cygnus, Cassiopeia (the Queen)!

What do you seers foresee for me?

Jacquelyn Markham (4/30/2024)

Funerary Stele of Heliodora. Egyptian, 2nd–3rd CE***

*Archeology supports evidence of Heliodora, first known woman astrologer in the Greco-Roman world. **See Notes On Thought & Vision by H.D.

***Image of Heliodora courtesy of Missouri Museum of Art and Archeology

Day 22 Insomniac Fights Sleep

Poet Voice4 Comments

The prompt for Day 22 from Napowrimo.net: “The idea is to write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it.” After much thought and deliberation (and loss of sleep), I chose the insomniac fighting sleep!

Insomniac Fights Sleep

The pillow hot,/On both sides/…Haven’t

Slept all night, too late/To dream of sleep. . . (Anna Akhmatova)

Sleep Speaks:

I am so peaceful

I am so kind

I am so healing

Why do you flight me?

Insomniac Speaks:

Oh, I can’t surrender

I have so many thoughts

competing for space in my mind

and some to worry about!

I might miss something

If I go to sleep. I must win &

keep my eyes open!

Sleep Speaks:

Insomniac, close your eyes.

Breathe deeply, surrender.

I demand it!

Insomniac Speaks:

No! No! I must get out of bed,

drink a cup of chamomile,

find my pen & journal,

write this idea I have for a poem!

Sleep Speaks:

Surrender, sleep my poet, sleep.

Insomnia Speaks:

I am counting backwards now.

100 breathe in

99 breathe out

98 breathe in

97 breath out

96 . . .

Sleep Speaks:

Surrender, my little one,

Sleep coos to the counting insomniac.

Insomniac Speaks:

Is that daylight I see on the blind?

I really can’t surrender.

            Jacquelyn Markham 4/22/2024

Day 21 Adoration for Fuchsia

Poet Voice2 Comments

Responding to today’s prompt from Napowrimo.net to write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color, so here it is!

Adoration for Fuchsia

A giant tube of magenta & one of rose

pigment feed my adoration for Fuchsia.

Pile it thick on canvas, mix in company of

red, pink, & purple & contrast loud

Fuchsia with yellow, backdrop

for self-portrait or sunflowers.

detail from painting by poet

Fuchsia blossoms in folds, flutter

in the California breeze, cliffs of fuchsia,

flowers falling over planters, winging

from balconies, clinging to fences, pots & trees.

Fuchsia everywhere in the California sun

floods my mind with memories—

rocky moonstone beaches, daring Big Sur journeys,

tide pool, museum & music excursions,

even poolside in your backyard,

drinks and moonlight swims,

sharing secrets in the night, only

Fuchsia knows now that you are gone.

Jacquelyn Markham (4/21/2024)

2024 Poem-a-Day begins!

Poet Voice7 Comments

Good bye March. Hello April and National Poetry Month!

So, the early bird prompt came in and I will end March with beginning the April poem-a-day challenge (as every ending is truly a beginning).

Here is the early bird prompt from NaPoWriMo.

“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”!

A flute

A flute coos blues

swallows air like a tuba.

In Galway’s hands, the flute shows off,

becomes a bumble bee!

A funky flute spits & hisses

like my tiger cat, hums

a deep rhythm like Yusef Lateef.

A flute sound in the woods

travels trees, accompanies

bird song. My flute

sends a silver melody

across the waves

an offering to the sea.

Jacquelyn Markham (3/31/24)

A flutist in an Easter bonnet!