Hurray! When the Chips are Down, I Managed my Cookies!

I'm back, after a few frustrating days of not being able to sign in and making one post from a friend's computer. It was a cookie problem, apparently, and now, I'm not quite sure what I did to fix it, but things are in working order again.

Today's thought: what's a suitable subject for a poem? The eternal question that faces poets on a daily basis. Anything, really. Anything large and deep, frustating, unfair, good, evil, great . . . anything. There are thousands, maybe millions of poems about these things.

At the other end of the scale, is there anything too small to be the subject of a poem? A speck of dust? A flea? A noiseless patient spider? A piece of gum that sticks to the bottom of your shoe on a hot day?

I haven't really researched the speck of dust or the piece of gum, but the flea and the noiseless patient spider have certaintly been the subject of poems, and famous poems, at that!

Here's today's challenge: choose something small, even very small, and write a poem about it. Maybe it will be a small poem--that's okay. But use powerful words, compact them, make them ring and make them sing!

Post yours as a comment to this blog post, and I'll post mine . . . as soon as I've written it.

More Poetry . . . Please!

I recently got a new book of poetry. It's an anthology that's sometimes used in college or university literature courses, and so presents a through-the-centuries and an across-the-board sweep of the genre. The subtitle is "A Pocket Anthology," though I dare say it will fit in no pocket of mine. However, it's small enough to carry in my purse or schoolbag, and certainly great for a bus- or train-ride read.

The first 55 pages are very textbookish, with short articles on types of poetry, the language of poetry, figurative language, stanza forms, and other arcana such as meter, feminine endings, and synechdoche. This, of course, would be enough for many to relegate the book to the shelf or worse, but once past this formidable section, we get to the poems themselves.

It starts off with ballads and lyrics from Scotland and England from around 1500. This is not the earliest English poetry there is, but it's pretty close to the start of what we have. Poetry by these "old dead white guys" is often disparaged, but it's pretty amazing. The words and lines are beautiful. The succinctness of the sonnets takes my breath away.

Some of my favourites are here: "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins; "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold; "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost; and "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman.

More--so many more--there's not time enough to read them all. But I think I shall make a resolution: more poetry. I am going to read more poetry. More of the favourites and more of the new.

Even if it's just one a day, like the multi-vitamin, my life will be enriched.

What are your favourites? Where will you start? How will you enrich your life with poetry?

Try Your Hand at This!

CV2 (Contemporary Verse 2), the Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing, published in Winnipeg, has an interesting contest: The Two-Day Poem Contest.

Here's what you have to do:

First, you have to register, and you have until April 1 to do that. When you register, you have to pay $12. There are many choices of how to pay, including PayPal. Complete details are at the CV2 web site.

Then, at midnight (CST), when Friday turns over to Saturday, April 2, contestants will be e-mailed 10 random words. You have 48 hours to write and submit a poem, using each of the 10 words at least once.

Here is last year's list of words:

1. grit 2. bound 3. anniversary 4. table 5. note
6. leaf 7. etiolate 8. magazine 9. slake 10. solemn

Get your creative juices flowing by practicing with these words (or open your dictionary at random at 10 different pages, close your eyes, and point to a word).

Then, after you've written half a dozen or so poems for practice, hemmed in by the need to use the above list of words, go to the CW2 web site and read the amazing winning poems from last year.

I'd better get practising!