Surprise(?)! I've been holding onto this for a while and have been scared to jinx it, but I really want to share about it, especially here, with you (because it wouldn't exist without you - although it technically barely exists as more than a title and a binder full of blank pages at the moment)... I'm writing a poetry book. It's called Spare Room, and I don't have much more than the title, basic concept, and a handful of poems yet, but I do have this introduction poem - I wrote it before this prompt, but it came directly from the title of the book so it felt like it fit:
What a beautiful title, concept, and poem! I also love that you of all people are writing a poetry collection entitled "Spare Room" because your poems (the ones I've read here, anyway) tend toward the beautifully spare. I can't wait to snatch up a copy as soon as it hits the shelves . . . but no rush, I know spare time can be hard to come by.
Thank you so much! 😭🧡 I was originally going to call it Spare, because I started with the concept of the different connotations of the word, but then I remembered Prince Harry's memoir is called Spare, so I had to pivot 😅
I think it will definitely be a while. I'm trying to sort out which of the poems I've already written will fit and how, and then I'll have to build out from there. But I really wanted you to be among the first to know, because even though I've had the passing thought that I'd like to do this one day, it wasn't until this year and this community that it started feeling much more possible, and less far off.
This is lovely, A., and I am so excited for your poety book to come! You have some wonderful poems to fill that spare room, and more to come. Thank you for sharing here, and for all that you create, share and open in here, and in me!
Thank you, Keith! I plan to keep it mostly to myself until it's close to finished, but you've all been so supportive and encouraging (and inspiring), so it felt right to let you all know sooner.
This poem put a big, goofy smile on my face. I love all the wordplay of the first stanza - "coming snap of summer" - and the playful spirit of the whole poem. Something about the way you describe the concert and your unbelief delighted me to no end.
So much playful and clever imagery here. I love the first stanza where you play with all the Sugars and weave in pea imagery "the coming snap of summer." I can also get such a Garcia/Dead feel from your imagery, like "it all feels like something/others might not believe later" and "we were still blanched form the cool earth but/testing our tendrils/We were smiling toward the sun." So good!
I like how infinitely ponderous/interpretive your poems are. Almost nothing is spelled out specifically and they always leave room for wonder. My brain went to a song by Victoria Williams/covered by Soul Asylum called Summer of the Drugs. Nice writing Rebekah.
Oh Rebekah, this is so playful and fun, and full of incredibly creative imagery and metaphor. I like the connection of peas to song and the evocative way you paint the context of a specific time in your life. May we have more drums and beach balls in our lives!
I love the wordplay of timeline and the metaphor of fishing line. So clever! The way you drew out the final lines with spacing made "the sharp delight of now" truly sharp in its delight. I ended up choosing the title of a Hania Rani song I find deliciously haunting ("Dancing with Ghosts" https://youtu.be/tP97_AQCldk?si=AYGvy-aGtdsPHrVI), then built a poem around it based on an event I attended this weekend in remembrance of the Great Falls Massacre of 1676 in which ~300 innocent indigenous people were slaughtered by the English:
Goosebumps. Wow. "Stealing lives because stealing land / hadn't been enough to sate / the unsatiable" . . . "inviting / all of creation to dance with the ghosts / whisper prayers and tobacco into the fire." If I were to start listing all the lines that grabbed me, I think I'd have to type up the whole poem!
So beautiful and haunting, Keith. I was really taken with the imagery of those who escaped swimming "with shad and salmon amidst / the Great Falls before freefalling / into the arms of ancestors waiting / sturdy and strong..." Wow. It's really special that you wrote/posted this on the anniversary of the event -- and transcended the event itself to reference ongoing genocides and the growing circle of ghosts around the fire.
Thanks, Rebekah. And "beautiful and haunting" are the perfect descriptors for how the commemoration felt and how it has remained with me since. I feel like some of the spirits that were there are now in me. When one of the Abenaki elders sang a song calling in the ancestors, a bald eagle began circling above. For real.
This is incredible, Keith. You capture the atrocity of the event and the sad history of our treatment of indigenous people and society so powerfully well. This is a superb poem.
Thirty+ years ago I wrote a poem with the title "Try and Find Me," a slight variation of a wonderful Graham Nash song called "Try to Find Me." It was an AOL poetry group I had joined, my first. That poem is somewhere in a box or bin, perahps never to be found, but I still like this title. A different time, a different comoputer, a somewhat different person, sitting at the same desk writing this poem. As I post this, the song "What a Wonderful, World", sung in this version by Kina Grannis and Imaginary Future" comes on and I am struck by another title that is awaiting a poem!
Beautiful, Larry. I love the last stanza so much, especially the image of the small child throwing starfish back to the sea, "wild hearted witness to the present moment / and the lasting power of the smallest act." Wow.
Really beautiful, Larry. I love the emphasis you add with "please" in the final line, and I also love the musicality you add with many of the lines rhyming with the recursive "me."
Funnily enough, I usually title my poems but with these prompts, I haven't been. That said, when looking for a title today, I reflected on the two albums I have been listening to on repeat. TTPD by Taylor Swift and Stick Season by Noah Kahan. Taylor's titles exhausted me, lol, so I went with one of my favorites on Stick Season - Growing Sideways. It's not my best work, I started focusing more on the rhyming than the meaning, but here it is:
.
Growing Sideways
.
This isn't quite the garden that I planted.
I tried to sow the seeds in perfect rows.
Tended it with care, there were blossoms everywhere
But you can't always control the way things grow.
.
There have been many years of lovely flowers
Though sometimes blooms would wither on the vine
No matter how I tried here and there some plants would die
And some areas have grown up over time.
.
Many times I've wanted just to give up
And let the whole damn thing just go to seed.
But then every spring, there would be the shoots of green
And I'd go back to pulling random weeds.
.
So even when my best laid plans go sideways
We're growing and we're thriving just the same.
Life keeps moving on, we're weak and then we're strong.
"This isn't quite the garden that I planted" - what a fabulous line! My garden is never the garden I planted either, and the metaphor works so well for the rest of life, too.
Indeed it cannat be tamed and truth is that life is dynamic in all its ramifications.. this is a beautiful piece.. I love Taylor's music and I've listened to Noah's Stick Season a few times, thanks for sharing :)
I love it, Karri! I'm still making my way through TTPD, and I've had the song Stick Season, stuck on repeat but hadn't gotten to listening to the rest of the album so I will have to do that now.
This is sweet, Karri--I like the way your ryhmes flow. I understand the push and pull of gardening, and the wondertful joy and perplexing frustration of a garden, and how it seems too vary year to year. A lot like life, as you so eloquently point out in your last line!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one! 😂 I do manage to keep some things alive in my garden proper, but being put in a container on my patio is a certain death sentence.
My cilantro has already bolted. Much to my daughter's delight (she hates it!) but I have managed to keep everything else alive so far. Alas it is only May.
Busy weekend, catching up on reading through these. Great work all, truly. I went through a few poems and found this title to be one I enjoyed-Armistice-multiple potential meanings-I like titles that lend to the piece but are fairly cryptic. I guess poetry in general is often that way. Makes it fun. https://open.substack.com/pub/billy2r6q7/p/armistice?r=1nyjrs&utm_medium=ios
Wow, this was powerful Billy. The imagery ("I would run and pound and fly/I was Mercury/now just flesh") and the pacing...it felt like I was running, flying, fleeing as I read it. Thanks for sharing.
This is a wonderful poem, Lisa, and a real good title! Time is always chasing me and vice versatility, but we rarely sit together! I line the prompt-I am always perplexed by the notion of titles, too. It’s like that proverbial question, what comes first, the title or the poem!
"Lords of the summer campground circuits / nemesis of the county fair timekeepers" - so good! You have me wishing for a time machine so that I can experience LAVA firsthand.
I never feel any pressure! I just really like your prompts; they are so thoughtful and always start my wheels turning. It’s just been bonkers around here lately 🫠. I did write a “door” poem but haven't felt ready to share it; it’s crazy rough and I’d like a little more coherence.
Loved the poem.. I'm new here and I think I'll definitely love it here..
I also find titles very hard but that depends on how the piece comes out.. Sometimes as soon as I'm done and I reread it comes and other times my muse just plays hide and seek with me.. I write from the heart and it's often hard to bypass but thinking about other titles (of stuff I've read before or seen) could actually be a huge help, thanks for sharing Lisa :)
Oh, that's brilliant! Thanks, A! Now I'm playing around in my head with the idea of having the word "Line" broken up so that it drops down the page a letter at a time, sort of like what happens with the later stanzas of the poem. Maybe that would give too much away, though.
Surprise(?)! I've been holding onto this for a while and have been scared to jinx it, but I really want to share about it, especially here, with you (because it wouldn't exist without you - although it technically barely exists as more than a title and a binder full of blank pages at the moment)... I'm writing a poetry book. It's called Spare Room, and I don't have much more than the title, basic concept, and a handful of poems yet, but I do have this introduction poem - I wrote it before this prompt, but it came directly from the title of the book so it felt like it fit:
This book is a spare room,
for you to rest and stay a while.
.
In it, I am offering you
my spare thoughts,
my spare words,
.
They came to me
in my spare time,
and I put them
in my pocket,
like spare change,
to share with you.
.
Thank you
for finding your own
spare room,
to hold them.
.
Welcome.
😶🌫️
What a beautiful title, concept, and poem! I also love that you of all people are writing a poetry collection entitled "Spare Room" because your poems (the ones I've read here, anyway) tend toward the beautifully spare. I can't wait to snatch up a copy as soon as it hits the shelves . . . but no rush, I know spare time can be hard to come by.
Thank you so much! 😭🧡 I was originally going to call it Spare, because I started with the concept of the different connotations of the word, but then I remembered Prince Harry's memoir is called Spare, so I had to pivot 😅
I think it will definitely be a while. I'm trying to sort out which of the poems I've already written will fit and how, and then I'll have to build out from there. But I really wanted you to be among the first to know, because even though I've had the passing thought that I'd like to do this one day, it wasn't until this year and this community that it started feeling much more possible, and less far off.
Love love love! So excited for you A!!
Thank you, Karri! I felt a bit anxious sharing it, but mostly, I'm excited.
This is lovely, A., and I am so excited for your poety book to come! You have some wonderful poems to fill that spare room, and more to come. Thank you for sharing here, and for all that you create, share and open in here, and in me!
Thank you Larry! Your encouragement is part of the reason I felt brave enough to begin.
I love this, A! Thank you so much for letting us in on your project. Beautiful introduction poem.
Thank you, Rebekah! It's a testament to you all that I knew you'd be so generous and happy for me. 🧡
I love this concept and this sweet introduction. Thank you for sharing it here...I can't wait to read your book when you birth it!
Thank you, Keith! I plan to keep it mostly to myself until it's close to finished, but you've all been so supportive and encouraging (and inspiring), so it felt right to let you all know sooner.
I'm so glad you shared it with us! Your quasi-secret is safe with me. I will remain quietly excited :))
That’s a great title for a book.
Thank you! 😊
Sugaree
.
First pea, she breaches and greens
while flashy bedfellows
Sugar Sprint and Sugar Daddy
repeatedly hit snooze.
Shake it, goes the song.
I sing it all day to praise her
and the coming snap of summer.
.
First concert, 1992.
I like their overtly psychedelic tunes,
but Jackie likes Sugaree.
At 16, we are surprised by everything:
the smell of weed, an endless drum solo,
a crowd-surfing beach ball.
It all feels like something
others might not believe later.
.
Now I am the later other
and scarcely believe our newness.
We were still blanched
from the cool earth, but
testing our tendrils.
We were smiling toward the sun.
.
Shake it up now, little sister.
I’ll meet you at the jubilee.
This poem put a big, goofy smile on my face. I love all the wordplay of the first stanza - "coming snap of summer" - and the playful spirit of the whole poem. Something about the way you describe the concert and your unbelief delighted me to no end.
So much playful and clever imagery here. I love the first stanza where you play with all the Sugars and weave in pea imagery "the coming snap of summer." I can also get such a Garcia/Dead feel from your imagery, like "it all feels like something/others might not believe later" and "we were still blanched form the cool earth but/testing our tendrils/We were smiling toward the sun." So good!
This feels so fresh and light and sweet, just like a pea. It's wonderful.
I like how infinitely ponderous/interpretive your poems are. Almost nothing is spelled out specifically and they always leave room for wonder. My brain went to a song by Victoria Williams/covered by Soul Asylum called Summer of the Drugs. Nice writing Rebekah.
Oh Rebekah, this is so playful and fun, and full of incredibly creative imagery and metaphor. I like the connection of peas to song and the evocative way you paint the context of a specific time in your life. May we have more drums and beach balls in our lives!
I love the wordplay of timeline and the metaphor of fishing line. So clever! The way you drew out the final lines with spacing made "the sharp delight of now" truly sharp in its delight. I ended up choosing the title of a Hania Rani song I find deliciously haunting ("Dancing with Ghosts" https://youtu.be/tP97_AQCldk?si=AYGvy-aGtdsPHrVI), then built a poem around it based on an event I attended this weekend in remembrance of the Great Falls Massacre of 1676 in which ~300 innocent indigenous people were slaughtered by the English:
*
Dancing with Ghosts
*
Dawn broke with gun smoke
The 19th day of May 1676.
Musket muzzles thrust into
wigwams like daggers slicing deep
into the soft bellies of docile deer,
spilling lead, spilling blood,
stealing lives because stealing land
hadn’t been enough to sate
the unsatiable. The trees wept
silently, the birds circled helplessly
witnessing the slaughter of Abenaki
brothers and sisters. The bodies
that managed to escape the slaughter
swam with shad and salmon amidst
the Great Falls before freefalling
into the arms of ancestors waiting
sturdy and strong to end their nightmare.
348 years later,
a lone voice and single drum call out
as an eagle circles, not in mourning
but in remembrance. Invoking, inviting
all of creation to dance with the ghosts,
whisper prayers and tobacco into the fire,
honor genocides past but not forgotten and
remember genocides present because
we must not forget.
Goosebumps. Wow. "Stealing lives because stealing land / hadn't been enough to sate / the unsatiable" . . . "inviting / all of creation to dance with the ghosts / whisper prayers and tobacco into the fire." If I were to start listing all the lines that grabbed me, I think I'd have to type up the whole poem!
Thanks, friend! So glad to know the goosebumps I felt while at the commemoration translated through the poem for you. <3
Powerful. …swam with shad and salmon…visceral.
Thank you, Billy. It was a powerful remembrance, very moving.
So beautiful and haunting, Keith. I was really taken with the imagery of those who escaped swimming "with shad and salmon amidst / the Great Falls before freefalling / into the arms of ancestors waiting / sturdy and strong..." Wow. It's really special that you wrote/posted this on the anniversary of the event -- and transcended the event itself to reference ongoing genocides and the growing circle of ghosts around the fire.
Thanks, Rebekah. And "beautiful and haunting" are the perfect descriptors for how the commemoration felt and how it has remained with me since. I feel like some of the spirits that were there are now in me. When one of the Abenaki elders sang a song calling in the ancestors, a bald eagle began circling above. For real.
Of course it did. So amazing.
Oh wowwww, not just a metaphor -- a real eagle-ancestor showed up. Sounds like such an incredible experience.
This is so moving, Keith.
Thank you, A. It was an extremely moving commemoration, so grateful to have been there.
Beautiful Keith....
Thank you, Karri!
This is incredible, Keith. You capture the atrocity of the event and the sad history of our treatment of indigenous people and society so powerfully well. This is a superb poem.
Thanks so much, Larry <3
Thirty+ years ago I wrote a poem with the title "Try and Find Me," a slight variation of a wonderful Graham Nash song called "Try to Find Me." It was an AOL poetry group I had joined, my first. That poem is somewhere in a box or bin, perahps never to be found, but I still like this title. A different time, a different comoputer, a somewhat different person, sitting at the same desk writing this poem. As I post this, the song "What a Wonderful, World", sung in this version by Kina Grannis and Imaginary Future" comes on and I am struck by another title that is awaiting a poem!
Try and Find Me
,
Foggy, misty coastline, there
In the distance, land awaits
safety, security, stability
Or maybe not.
Hazy sense of identity and direction
stepping circles to a tune I once knew
now the dance is lost in a former body
Try and find me.
,
The exterior is real and as genuine
as our facades can hope to be;
But there is more unseen,
locked away safely, shielded from harm,
the judgements that come so quickly,
the norms and mores and societal shifts
oppressive horsehair blanket smothering
the dreams inside, the hopes for tomorrow.
Try and find me.
,
Sometimes our voices rise and shine to the song,
Other times they are merely a whisper,
unsure of who may be listening.
The encouragement of hopeful poets,
applauding robustly in the bleachers,
small child waiting on the shoreline,
throwing starfish back into the sea,
wild hearted witness to the present moment
and the lasting power of the smallest act.
Please try and find me.
Beautiful, Larry. I love the last stanza so much, especially the image of the small child throwing starfish back to the sea, "wild hearted witness to the present moment / and the lasting power of the smallest act." Wow.
Thank you very much, Lisa!
Loved this one!!
Thank you!
you're welcome always :)
Really beautiful, Larry. I love the emphasis you add with "please" in the final line, and I also love the musicality you add with many of the lines rhyming with the recursive "me."
Thank you Keith. The ryhming was not conscious, and thank you for noting that.
This is beautiful, Larry. The last stanza, especially, speaks to me. I love that you decided to rewrite a lost poem.
Thank you, A. Your responses always lift me up!
There are some gems in here. I love “wild hearted witness to the present moment”!
Thank you very much, LeeAnn.
It's mutual! Yours do the same for me.
Funnily enough, I usually title my poems but with these prompts, I haven't been. That said, when looking for a title today, I reflected on the two albums I have been listening to on repeat. TTPD by Taylor Swift and Stick Season by Noah Kahan. Taylor's titles exhausted me, lol, so I went with one of my favorites on Stick Season - Growing Sideways. It's not my best work, I started focusing more on the rhyming than the meaning, but here it is:
.
Growing Sideways
.
This isn't quite the garden that I planted.
I tried to sow the seeds in perfect rows.
Tended it with care, there were blossoms everywhere
But you can't always control the way things grow.
.
There have been many years of lovely flowers
Though sometimes blooms would wither on the vine
No matter how I tried here and there some plants would die
And some areas have grown up over time.
.
Many times I've wanted just to give up
And let the whole damn thing just go to seed.
But then every spring, there would be the shoots of green
And I'd go back to pulling random weeds.
.
So even when my best laid plans go sideways
We're growing and we're thriving just the same.
Life keeps moving on, we're weak and then we're strong.
This garden we call life can not be tamed.
"This isn't quite the garden that I planted" - what a fabulous line! My garden is never the garden I planted either, and the metaphor works so well for the rest of life, too.
Love the rhyming, and I think you nailed it on meaning, too :))
Indeed it cannat be tamed and truth is that life is dynamic in all its ramifications.. this is a beautiful piece.. I love Taylor's music and I've listened to Noah's Stick Season a few times, thanks for sharing :)
Thank you!
I love it, Karri! I'm still making my way through TTPD, and I've had the song Stick Season, stuck on repeat but hadn't gotten to listening to the rest of the album so I will have to do that now.
It is sooooo good. Like probably one of my favorite albums of all time.
This is sweet, Karri--I like the way your ryhmes flow. I understand the push and pull of gardening, and the wondertful joy and perplexing frustration of a garden, and how it seems too vary year to year. A lot like life, as you so eloquently point out in your last line!
Confession. I am not much of a gardener. I mainly put things in containers to die. 😂
I'm so glad I'm not the only one! 😂 I do manage to keep some things alive in my garden proper, but being put in a container on my patio is a certain death sentence.
My cilantro has already bolted. Much to my daughter's delight (she hates it!) but I have managed to keep everything else alive so far. Alas it is only May.
Busy weekend, catching up on reading through these. Great work all, truly. I went through a few poems and found this title to be one I enjoyed-Armistice-multiple potential meanings-I like titles that lend to the piece but are fairly cryptic. I guess poetry in general is often that way. Makes it fun. https://open.substack.com/pub/billy2r6q7/p/armistice?r=1nyjrs&utm_medium=ios
Wow, this was powerful Billy. The imagery ("I would run and pound and fly/I was Mercury/now just flesh") and the pacing...it felt like I was running, flying, fleeing as I read it. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for reading and I always am honored by your kind comments.
It's my pleasure to read your writing, Billy! Thank you for your generosity in sharing it here.
This is a remarkable poem, Billy. It feels lived and breathed in reality and that liminal space just beyond reality. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Larry. Really appreciate your kind and thoughtful comments. Tried to blend a lot of subjects into that one…hopefully it made sense.
It certainly did! Your poem was coherent and mystical, of this world but not in it.
This is a wonderful poem, Lisa, and a real good title! Time is always chasing me and vice versatility, but we rarely sit together! I line the prompt-I am always perplexed by the notion of titles, too. It’s like that proverbial question, what comes first, the title or the poem!
We knew 3 chords pretty well,
Faked the rest.
Hour long versions of
Smoke On The Water,
Jumpin' Jack Flash
and
Magic Carpet Ride
would thunder up from our basement rehearsals
as loud as our Sears Silvertones would go.
Lords of the summer campground circuits
Nemesis of the county fair timekeepers.
We were kool and we knew it,
that scruffy quartet of pimply faced high school 'hot rock'-ers known,
of course, as
"LAVA"
"Lords of the summer campground circuits / nemesis of the county fair timekeepers" - so good! You have me wishing for a time machine so that I can experience LAVA firsthand.
Nice work, Chuck! Here’s to garage and basement bands and hours spent listening to songs that only made sense in the time and states we were in!
Whew. What a poem. I love these lines:
"You are always moving,
like rigor mortis has a cousin,
muscles stiffened, perpetual sprint,
you run from the fear
that you’re too late."
As always, I'm hoping I can come back for the prompt 💛.
Thanks, Margaret! I hope you will, but no pressure . . . I always hope to do about a thousand more things than are actually achievable!
I never feel any pressure! I just really like your prompts; they are so thoughtful and always start my wheels turning. It’s just been bonkers around here lately 🫠. I did write a “door” poem but haven't felt ready to share it; it’s crazy rough and I’d like a little more coherence.
Oh, and I love that you wrote a door poem, whether or not you end up sharing it!
I can relate to bonkers! Wishing you calm or sanity or bonkers lite or whatever it is you crave!
I'm LOLing at "bonkers lite". I'd take any of the above, thank you 😊.
Loved the poem.. I'm new here and I think I'll definitely love it here..
I also find titles very hard but that depends on how the piece comes out.. Sometimes as soon as I'm done and I reread it comes and other times my muse just plays hide and seek with me.. I write from the heart and it's often hard to bypass but thinking about other titles (of stuff I've read before or seen) could actually be a huge help, thanks for sharing Lisa :)
Thank you so much, and welcome!! I love the idea that our muses are just playing hide and seek with us . . . that sure seems to fit for me, too.
I love this poem and how you untangle the line from time itself, so my suggestion would be to separate the title: Time Line
Oh, that's brilliant! Thanks, A! Now I'm playing around in my head with the idea of having the word "Line" broken up so that it drops down the page a letter at a time, sort of like what happens with the later stanzas of the poem. Maybe that would give too much away, though.
It couldn't hurt to write it down and see how it feels. Or maybe try adding space between the letters(?): Time L i n e
I like that idea! I'll play around a bit.
rigor's cousin.
Ticking Knife😱
Nice to "see" you here, Rick!
I actually love the title timeline for this poem Lisa. It fits perfectly!