November Poetry Challenge: Where Is It?

[Angeline]

Hello poets and welcome to November Challenge B. In this challenge you'll write poems that convey a sense of place. I've noticed that many of us here tend to focus on experiences and feelings in our poems: I know I do. But some of my favorite poems are about places; whatever else is happening, a strong sense of where the narrator is can set mood or tone and really make you feel like you're there as you read. Listen to William Butler Yeats most famous poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree. You can almost see Innisfree (which, yes, is a real place), feel how peaceful it is contrasted with the busy roadways of cities, feel the poet's yearning for it.

Frank O'Hara's poem, The Day Lady Died about his discovering that the great Billie Holiday has died, paints a vivid picture of New York City, circa mid-twentieth century. The images of the narrator going about his humdrum day and the places he visits makes you see and hear it all and contrasts with the shock he feels upon reading the news that Billie has died.

One of my favorite place poems is this one by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which uses image and sound to perfectly convey place:

Memory of Cape Cod
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The wind in the ash-tree sounds like surf on the shore at Truro.
I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still with your silly bleating, sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . .

They said: Come along! They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand and come along, it's long after sunset!

The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine-woods along by Long Nook, the wind's died down!
They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand, and your shells, too, and come along, we'll find you another beach like the beach at Truro.

Let me listen to wind in the ash . . . it sounds like surf on the shore.
**********

I've written a lot of place poems. Winter Harbor is one of my favorites, about the beautiful harbor town in Downeast Maine where eagleyez and I spent many long weekends.

So write a poem (or poems) about a place or use place to help convey whatever you have to say. It can be a real place or an imagined one, somewhere you've been (a place you lived or visited or just thought about) or imagine (a galaxy far, far away is fine, too). Just try to make place power your poem. Try to avoid describing (e.g., telling), but instead use the tools in your poet's kit (image, metaphor, sound, rhyme, etc.) to bring your poem to life.

Erotic or not, form or free verse, any length... all are fine as are comments and observations in this thread. Just show us somewhere. Happy writing!

 

[Ash999]

My City....
It is the financial Capital of India
And hometown of Bollywood too....
Mecca of Indian Cricket....
By now it's Name, must hv bin' guessed by U!!!

 

[Ash999]

For some reason I am not able to sign into my Ash9 persona. So I created this new profile but it's me only. Same guy/ poet

 

[Angeline]

For some reason I am not able to sign into my Ash9 persona. So I created this new profile but it's me only. Same guy/ poet

I'm glad you're here Ash. Thank you for the poem!

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

Home is a lessoning
of the past

Where a solitary
light was often
left on,

long after the dishwasher
had fallen silent, and the chairs
expectantly emptied

long after the shadow of the clock hands
had ticked well past midnight’s coping ability,

home was an empty place where a lone ant,
drunk on spilled wine,
was often heard singing

as she slut walked home.

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

A cabin is a person

They would huddle around,
those wily old mountains
of stone, hail, river hair,

these buttressed hills
would squat around
the old cabin, while

blanketed on their shoulders
the trees stood in moss, and
listened as Grandpa rocked

and laughed, telling tall tales
while Grandma cooked fried
bread with warm milk for our

supper. Far away, long ago,
we were two wild beating
hearts,

listening to
the meadows
flowering.

Once we were children
and neighbours in this
place.

 

[Lazaran]

Where Is It???

Grandpa’s musty basement bar
an unholy sanctuary
illuminated by neon
decorated in vulgar kitsch
reserved for “the men”
drinking beer
(or something harder)
playing cards
engaging in ribald talk
a rite of passage
for older male cousins
coming of age
granted admittance
glimpsed at rare moments
by a youngster on an errand
to deliver a message
(Dinners ready)
for the women and kids
gathered and waiting upstairs
left to wonder
imagining the full scope
of the secret world below.

(The family fractured before I came of age and experienced the rite of passage- and I don’t really regret the missed opportunity.)

 

[Tzara]

Haven

A house on a small cove
that looks toward Canada
with a fireplace and a lamp,
comfortable chairs,
and, best of all, quiet.

I sip tea and read
as the sun slips down
into the open sea,

and only perhaps a fox
leaving its den
to hunt for dinner
reminds me of the world,
before I turn another page.

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

Where the wind and rain die laughing

Muted light what else at night would the moon look like
when hidden behind the couch of a mountain growing
in bulk the darkness is a tree shifting the shadow on the
ground where your car was perched before it flew away

with you the lightening strikes through the boom pitter
patter of the rain across the roof the wind scuffs along
with thoughts of you. In my walls your body stormed
the valley of my arms, with your love my darkest fears

Grew into this mountain that blocks even the moon while
rainy fingers race the porch to run off into nothing. Not
even good ole whiskey will undo this rope around my
neck. Or the emptiness of your chair, what can I tell you?

It could be worse? When I hear the car returning, your
headlights slipping in and out of the rain. Along this road
the rope you left around my neck is love. How dare you
make me want to live on the crest of your chest! In these

hills my fears will meet their death. In the salt of your earth
among the blankets the sheets will ripple naked with our
outlines, there will be tall grass growing around our feet,
in a lovers’ moon the wind and rain are always laughing.

 

[Lazaran]

Where is it???

Grant Park Beach

existing only in gaudily glorified and glamorized gilded memories

that secluded beach with the supremely splendid sublime sun and sand

girls testing out their hard won beach bodies and brazen bikini bravery

guys performing overly dramatic displays of dangerous daring do

everyone in attendance angling for an ample allotment of attention

all to the beat of bombastic bass blasting from boss boom-boxes

Was it even real???

Was it ever real???

 

[Angeline]

The Alcove

I'm in an alcove,
a small curve of space
between two rooms,
a living room with its carpet
of cabbage roses, green couch
I'd stand on watching for sister
to return from school, watching
the older kids with their books
and swagger,

and a dining room, its window
tall enough for me to stand in
dreaming of flight to Neverland.

But the alcove that joined
those rooms held the real treasure:
a heat register where Mama put dough
to rise, to fill downstairs with promises
of challah, babka, rugelach.
There was a little door I was convinced
led to a secret world, to Toyland.

I'd sit on the floor, back against
that door, across from the blonde
wood hi-fi with its nubby beige-gold
fabric I'd trace with my fingers
to feel sound tremble
through the speakers.
while I held the albums
like so many precious gifts:

Beethoven's nine symphonies
all conducted by Leopold Stokowski
looking stern and powerful on the cover,
baton at the ready, The Afternoon
of a Faun, said creature pictured
amid trees, looking fey and big-eyed,
the dinosaurs placid on the cover
of The Rite of Spring, unaware
of their pending destruction,
the marionettes of Petrushka
and my favorite Scheherazade,
with its depiction of a dancing woman
skirts flying and teeth flashing,

delighted to be dreaming
up stories, much as I was,
even then and still am now.

 

[Shady_nz]

This land of mine,
Surrounded by sea
Is so far away but still,
is unspoiled and clean
The beauty that surrounds us
is shared with visitors,
Nay, not visitors but friends
from lands afar

With room for all to
find places untouched by
the hand of man
Golden sands and forests green
Creatures strange but true
Nature in all its glory
can be found like
no place on Earth

Still we have a cosmopolitan air
With many cultures making
this place home
No one is a stranger here
with friendly faces to make
one feel at home
Whereever home may be
You are welcome to my place