For the Ghost of Christmas Present

I've decided to write 12 poems for Christmas. Dave's Noel Ghosts dare and giveaway inspired me.

For the occasion, I thought to try a villanelle again. It's been a while.

The villanelle has an aba rhyme scheme. It has five 3-line stanzas and ends with a 4-line stanza. The first line of the first stanza becomes the 3rd line of the second stanza. The third line of the first stanza becomes the third line of the 3rd stanza. The first line of the first stanza becomes the third line of the fourth stanza. The third line of the first stanza becomes the third line of the fifth stanza. Then, to wrap it all up in the sixth stanza, we do an abab and put the first line of the first stanza as the third line and the third line of the first stanza as the last line.

If that sounds confusing, take a look at the poem below. You'll see how it works. Why not try one? Maybe with a Christmas ghost in the lines?

The Ghost of Christmas Present

She drifts amidst the holly
picking berries round and red
for the love of you, or me

avoiding news of tragedy
along each jagged edge
she drifts amidst the holly

pretending not to see
where evergreens have bled
for the love of you, or me

along an evening's melody
where harmony has lately fled
she drifts amidst the holly

painting crimson on her knees,
a silent angel fallen, led
for the love of you, or me

pricking fingertips on memory,
leaving things unsaid
she drifts amidst the holly
for the love of you, or me.

Handmade Wrapping Paper Gifts photo, by L.L. Barkat. This poem is offered for One Shot Wednesday and Random Acts of Poetry.

On, In and Around Mondays: The Impossible Ritual

I peel in a circle, always. Long spirals fall, make us smile.

Apples, cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice. Then the dough, rolled and placed into a blue stoneware pie plate. I pile the apples inside it, impossibly high (this is how I learned it from my mother).

My Eldest works beside me. Besides the apple filling, we also do cherry, blueberry, pecan, and this year raspberry to please my sister (who I haven't seen on Thanksgiving in years).

In about four hours' time, it is finished: the five-pie outlay. I do this every year. It is more than we need, like the apples piled impossibly high.

Part of me says no to this display of abundance. And that is why I must engage in this ritual.

Like the wine berries in the woods that we pick in June (and never come to the end of), these pies are more than my little world needs. I remind myself that, soon enough, Lent and fasting will come, like the woods empty of berries. And that will be a different time, also essential to our understanding of life.

But for today, it is feasting. I want my girls to learn this from me, their mother.


Pie photos by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

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For the Ghost of Christmas Past

Write about a ghost of Christmas, he said. This was as close as I got, but I am perfectly happy with it...

The Promise

Send me your questions.
I will be your abbey,
full with apple trees,
rosemary, wattle fence
and quince.
Choose a plum.
I will answer your desire,
feed it to you sugared,
let my thumb touch
the cloisters
of your neck
and chin.

For Random Acts of Poetry, hosted at Dave's place (along with a giveaway) and Tweetspeak.

So I Got it Backwards

Well.

I decided to try writing a pantoum.

Except I trusted my memory.

Never trust your memory with something like a pantoum. Especially not a few days before Thanksgiving, when you are busy wrestling with a fridge that should have been cleaned out... more than a few days before Thanksgiving.

However, be encouraged. You didn't wait until Christmas to clean your fridge. And your weariness and busyness simply resulted in a backwards pantoum. By all estimates, the stuffing and mashed potatoes and pies are still going to be okay, though you won't rest completely assured until Thursday has come and gone.

A pantoum is supposed to go like this. Stanzas of four lines (as many as you like), where you keep taking lines 2 and 4 and turning them into the next stanza's 1st and 3rd. When you are ready to finish, you supply your last stanza's 1st and 3rd in the usual way and you grab your very first stanza's 1st line and make it the 4th, and the 3rd and make it the 2nd.

Now, do you see why you can't trust your memory with something like a pantoum? Mine turned out backwards, or upside down, or something like that, so I'll give you some links to real pantoums when it's all over. In the meantime, my backwards pantoum...

On the Walnut Dresser

White phone is in love
with whispering fan— old
fashioned, it turns away,
gazes through wires

at the pale yellow room
white phone is in love
with a silver neck, so
fashioned, it turns away

where a dying sun long has gazed
at the pale yellow room,
mirrored and walled
with a silver neck, so

still it cannot move
where a dying sun long has gazed
at mornings that silent break.
Mirrored and walled,

fashioned, it turns away,
still it cannot move.
White phone is in love,
at morning's silent break.

This post is offered for One Shot Wednesday. Photo by L.L. Barkat.

Examples of Right-Side Up Pantoums

Evening Harmony, Charles Baudelaire
Stillbirth, Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Parent's Pantoum, Carolyn Kizer


Thanks to poet Kim Addonizio for the idea of making one item be in love with another. Also, it is not her fault I wrote a backwards pantoum. She explained it splendidly, should I have taken the time to consult the explanation. :)

On, In and Around Mondays: Peaceful Path

How do you find peace?

She has her ways. And they are sweet. Things to see, to catch the fragrance of, to touch.




Yesterday we walked. We took a new path called Peaceful Path, that wound near the highway. "So peaceful!" we laughed to each other, and decided this was someone's wishful thinking.




Still, we found our peace. In the light. In the fading light. In each other.




These gifts from the One who made them all... were they not, in the end, a peaceful path?



Rosary and Rockefeller Park photos, by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

What Else But...

Contingency plans.




Our just-in-case.




Our now-I-will-because-I-can't-anymore.




Our turning.




Or our waiting.




Our seeing-it-differently.




After all, it seemed like the only thing to do.


Contingency Plans photos by L.L. Barkat.

They Gave Me 125 Words

This past week, Gordon Atkinson wrote a beautiful tribute for a friend who died. The week before, David Rupert had been charged with the task of putting his father's life into 125 words. David found the task daunting, and considered what it might be like to write his own obit.

All of this got me thinking (writing), which first appeared as a comment on Gordon's piece. Some of you have probably, therefore, already seen this...

Upon Writing My Obituary,
I Exceeded the Word Count by 14

She loved a good poem, a good chickpea with garlic and spices,
and a good afternoon of finding orange mushrooms or wine berries
in the woods. She once fixed an iron, tried to save her grandmother’s chair
(but the butter-yellow paint came off in bits), and tried to fix words so people could maybe find their own fixing within. When she was a girl she had short wavy hair, with a curl in the middle of her forehead. Her mother read her that rhyme about the girl with the curl who “when she was good was very, very good” but “when she was bad she was horrid.” She wanted you to know (as if you couldn’t have guessed) that even though she grew up and styled her hair straight with a blow dryer, the curl was still really there.

This post is offered for One Shot Wednesday.

On, In and Around Mondays: About a Girl

There is something about a girl.




Mine is in her new orange coat. She is chattering about how the rosettes have buttons behind them, how she feels so warm, how the coat comes down past her knees, and isn't it just perfect to go with the sunset.




My Eldest and I are enchanted. We follow our orange-coat girl around with our cameras. Taking pictures of her just being her.




Maybe we think of girls as God's afterthought. Yes, I think we sometimes do. As if the arrangement of Genesis was making some kind of statement about God's care for girls. Or their relative importance.




My girl, in her new orange coat, is not an afterthought. She is the only thought you can possibly manage for the whole time you walk around at sunset time. She is the crown of the day, the seal on our hearts. And it seems to me God must think so too.



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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

The Felicities of New Publishing (or Why Traditional Publishers May Someday Die)

It used to be that you needed a warehouse to store your book, if you wanted to publish, print, and sell it. It used to be that you needed an idea with blockbuster appeal, or you couldn't get published. That was before Lulu and Createspace and the print-on-demand possibilities.

Today, if you want to honor someone with a book of poetry, or simply be creative, you can publish a book without much cost or hassle. Here, for instance, is the opening of a book by Heather Truett, called Felicities. Through print-on-demand publishing, Heather has been able to honor a friend as well as offer her tribute to others who appreciate her poems...



If you're an author with a solid platform, and people appreciate your work, the selling can happen. Amazon's rigorous and practically automatic marketing system will put your book beside other books. (If you shop at Amazon you've probably already noticed the systems: people who bought 'this' also bought 'that'; category tags, Listmanias. For books that really take hold, they might end up on Amazon's front page or in their email recommendations.)

None of this has completely replaced "the publishing system" as we know it. But I would suggest that the system is not the technology so much as it is the Networks. Traditional publishers' current biggest advantage is that people know people who know people. That's why it still doesn't hurt a first-time author to get a book deal with a traditional publisher. The royalties are dismal in comparison to using Lulu or Createspace, but it connects an author with an established Network beyond his or her own audience.

Things will change. Someday it will be more advantageous for an author to skirt the traditional publisher. But he will not be able to skirt the need for a Network.

In a few weeks, over at TheHighCalling.org, we're running a piece called The Work of a Bookseller. In it, the bookseller discusses how he decides to stock his store: book reviews, press releases, reader recommendations— in other words, word-of-mouth... people who know books, telling people who know people. A network.

I am fascinated by the world of new publishing. There will still be a need for editors, designers, publicists, networks, but these may end up being separated from the Traditional Publishing House. Certainly the need for warehousing, royalty-disbursement, and a whole lot of paperwork and marketing efforts have already been eliminated by the big POD players.

But I predict that one thing won't change...

The world will still need the good writer, at the center of it all.


Book photo by L.L. Barkat. Introduction screenshot from Felicities, by Heather Truett.

The Color of Things

I have been writing more poetry lately. Apologies to my non-poetry friends :)


On a Tuesday Leaving

You think you know
the color of things— a maple
in the back yard is gray rivers
where gray squirrels go boating
towards a blue bay...

then the world turns,

you want to run into the house,
pull somebody off the couch,
drag him (her) to see that the maple
isn't gray at all, and red squirrels
are racing to tips of bright arteries,
bleeding towards the end of day.


Girl in the Orange Coat photo, by L.L. Barkat.

I Stole a Poem from a Word in the Comment Box

David said something about ticking. So the idea was stuck in my brain. I guess it tumbled out when I got to playing with words. Anyway, I must thank David for providing, unbeknownst to him, the beginning of my poem...

Instrumental

The grandfather clock is tick, tick, ticking
pretending I am still the girl with pixie curls
and a lilac dress, under the maple
that swung like the sea, like the sea
singing, "I will bring you home, child,
I will open a space in the rocks and bring you
home." It always felt like a harmony— the clock,
the sea, the maples swinging. It never felt like
what it was: the white metronome of years.

This poem is in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

Abstract Sun photo, by Sara. Used with permission.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Finding Our Place Within

The place I am this morning is tired.

Maybe it's the time-change. More likely it's that the day ahead is too small for what I need to fit into it. Laundry, home schooling, business, preparing a talk for tomorrow.

Yesterday I did nothing much, because I knew the place I was in. But my daughters and I played a little poetry game.

"Bring a notebook and a pen to dinner," I said.

"That sounds mysterious. And exciting!" chimed my Littlest.

We borrowed lines from Elizabeth Bishop, to use as our own first lines. Then we played with various catalog techniques... repeat words at the beginning of the lines, repeat words between lines, repeat words at the end of the lines.

I can't say I wrote anything really worth sharing. My Littlest also found the exercises difficult. She and I are the same kind of writers; we write from a place of personal rhythm. Even so, I imagine that my Littlest and I were skill-building, though our poems-of-the-moment suffered. But my Eldest was empowered by the experience. And all of us agreed it is a marvelous way to play with words.

Here are two poems from my Eldest, then...

A washing hangs upon the line
a washing rain engulfs it.

*

With ten big beads,
one a pin for a dress of beads,
black and red beads,
one bead lost in a lawn where beads
of dew still stand, two beads
blue shiny earring beads
three beads forgotten in a box of buttons, only beads
to attest to ten big beads,
now three beads left, beads
yet unfathomed, unexplored, unused. Beads.

— by Sara

Japanese Maple photo by L.L. Barkat. Poems by Sara, used with permission.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also in honor of Random Acts of Poetry.

The Work of a Poem

Join us at TheHighCalling.org for Random Acts of Poetry. We can't wait to read your words.


Rocks in Stream photo, by L.L. Barkat.

Catalog: Take Two

I gave up.

But that didn't seem like a final answer.

So I went back to my pencil and paper, and worked on more catalog poems. This one seemed perhaps good enough to share. After I finished it, I realized that very few poets carry on a catalog (repeating the same words) for more than a few lines. Maybe I will try again, using that strategy, but for today, here is one that carries it all the way through...

Like any other day,

you breathe and a tiny piece of the world disappears, slips into
you; I am carried forward by the emptiness
you don't even know how you move me without trying
you exhale and I am like dust that turns in the light
you lift a woolen sleeve, pull, make shadows in the hall. I watch
you press an old latch—it sticks and I realize we still haven't fixed it
you have the smallest fingers, but somehow they struggle through
you stand between me and the world, what will I do if, without turning,
you, like autumn just outside this window, leave, or unleave.


Stream at Rockefeller Park photo, by L.L. Barkat. This post is in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In and Around Mondays: 3 Ways I Quit Technology

This is how it happens.

One moment I am happily gazing at my computer screen. The next moment I feel tired. Or is it hungry? Maybe I want a piece of chocolate. No. Maybe it is the piano I am wanting.

I turn away and wash a dish, clean out a drawer, go outside, play the piano. Whatever seems like the next thing.



It used to be that I couldn't listen to the tiredness, the hunger, the wanting. Why didn't I listen?



Listening is the first thing. It helps me know when to forget about blogging, tweeting, checking email. It helps me remember to look up, and out, beyond.



Tea is the second thing. At four o' clock every day, I find Creme Earl Grey, Bagatelle, Granada Green or African Red Bush. I sit on the back porch, stare at the little garden. My mind wanders. Ten things that were bothering me float away on air, or so it seems. I can see what needs to be done, or not done.





A weekly technology Sabbath is the third thing. I take mine on Sundays. The woods are calling, and the bridges. Or the little lanes. Ten more things that were bothering me disappear into the green, the water, the trails, the stones.



Listening. Daily tea time. A single Sabbath day. I quit technology with these, and then I return. Happily.



Rockefeller and Kitchawan park photos, by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below. If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

RELATED: Write specifically about your relationship to technology and you can add your link at TheHighCalling.org.