Goodbye to July Picnic

[jjhunter]

Sunday, every Sunday, let's have a community picnic. It's probably been a long week, and it's lovely to have a few minutes to sit back and relax and enjoy some good conversation in a less formal space. Feel free to bring something for the Picnic Basket - a poem you liked this week, a thought you had or something you experienced, or even something completely unrelated to poetry whatsoever that you just feel like sharing. Just take a moment to say hello, and maybe have a bite to eat; no one is going anywhere fast, and the shade promises some relief from the everyday heat. Let’s get to know each other a bit better, here under the branches of the poet’s tree.

Comments

New Poetry Form to Try

[jjhunter]

For anyone interested in a challenge this Sunday, try Allison Joseph's Sweetelle format.

“The sweetelle was invented by me on 3/4/12. It has 10 lines, 14 syllables per line and refrain lines at line 1, line 5 and line 10. The poem can have a rhyme scheme if the poet wishes, but end-rhyme is not required. The lines can be metered or syllable count lines.”

[untonuggan]

I am looking forward to Lammas/Lughnasa on August 1st and thinking about writing a thanksgiving/harvest poem for it.

I might do a version of John Barleycorn, which is a popular folk poem/ballad one version of which was written by Scottish poet John Burns. (Warning: it is a tale of a personification of corn/grain being killed in a cyclical manner, so some of it might be too graphic for your taste. I would say that if you can handle Shakespeare then you can handle this poem.)

Why would I enjoy this poem, you might wonder? In a neopagan setting, John Barleycorn personifies the rise and fall of summer and the sun throughout the year. He also symbolizes self-sacrifice. I also think of John Barleycorn whenever I think of all the things life can throw in your path that kind of knock you about, and getting up again afterward...for after all, next year John Barleycorn is planted again and it happens all over again.

[lnhammer]

This week's most excellent find while waiting around in used book stores: an anthology of territorial Arizona poetry -- that is, poems written in and about Arizona before it became a state in 1912. Well, there's some poems from the two decades after that, but the bulk is from the 1800s.

So, period cowboy poetry, instead of the modern genre of nostalgia.

---L.

[spiralsheep]

The poem A Calendar of Hares by Anna Crowe pleased me recently. I like poem sequences and I found this oblique seasonal round very satisfying.

Full poem: http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/calendar-hares

A Calendar of Hares (extract, the first half: 6/12)

1. At the raw end of winter
the mountain is half snow, half
dun grass. Only when snow
moves does it become a hare.

2. If you can catch a hare
and look into its eye
you will see the whole world.

3. That day in March
watching two hares boxing
at the field's edge, she felt
the child quicken.

4. It is certain Midas never saw a hare
or he would not have lusted after gold.

5. When the buzzard wheels
like a slow kite overhead
the hare pays out the string.

6. The man who tells you
he has thought of everything
has forgotten the hare.

[primeideal]

Tangential, but I enjoyed the Olympics opening ceremony. I have a whole lot of thoughts about art and stuff that I should write down at some point and that only inspired me more.

[syntaxofthings]

This is an old post, but this week I reread my two favorite poems a few times and I hunger for more poetry. Any and all recs appreciated.