2013 Challenge: One Poem a Week

[Tzara]

Happy New Year, everyone.

Now get to work.

We've had a lot of different challenges here, ranging from monthly ones to the various n poems in x days kind of ones, to the thematic challenges on form or subject or whatever.

Here's a commitment challenge: write at least one poem every week during 2013. Number them by week number (i.e., 1-52). Post them, if at all possible, during the relevant week; in any case, write the poem during the relevant week.

This should give you some flexibility to revise and edit poems, throw away draft poems you decide you don't like, plus give you time to go on vacation, deal with life issues, etc. The one rule (which I cannot, of course, enforce) is that you actually write something each week--no stockpiling multiple poems ahead of time. The object is to think about poetry and write a poem every week of the year, regardless of whatever else is going on in your life.

Fifty-two poems is a significant number, but not, I think, an unmanageable one.

So, go.

 

[tongueslip]

peace?

two fingers tip opposite
directions stubbornly refuting
common origin

 

[champagne1982]

Week 1

My Petunia Can Lick
Your Geranium
by dr. Suess

At the flower show
different blossoms
were on my mind

Their full blown petals
gaping and wet
with salacious lickings

A woman's dissonant
harangue twisted through lips
and changed somehow

Into melodious art
and all I could think
is how I wish I were there.​

 

[bronzeage]

Part of a work in progress, which is supposed to be a blues song when complete.

Working title: Egypt is the Answer

Akhenaten found John the Baptist standing on the shore
he said, Johnny baby, I can't take it no more.
My soul is filled with demons evil and mean
Hold me down till the water rinses clean.

 

[bogusagain]

week 1

ogre

the ogre in my head is surly
ill tempered he stomps around
cursing the axe buried in his skull
agitated he thumps my eyes
and urinates down my throat

a female arm pulls me closer
her hand sliding down my belly
trying to arouse some interest
but ogre has not the inclination
exertion would prove painful

between the ogre and the hand
I am stretched like elastic
my salute is hard and healthy
my stomach, weak and curdled
ogre wants his bladder emptied

the hand fits like a sleeve
and thinks its attention welcome
soothing the disgruntled ogre
who for the moment is gah gah
but after will beat my brains to putty

 

[greenmountaineer]

Week 1

Étude Op. 10, No. 3

I hide behind her chair
when Grandmère
plays Tristesse.
That's the word
she taught to me
when I asked her why.

I don't like
the sound of it,
so I count my dolls,
1-2-3, see? I can count
all my Matryoshka dolls
until she tucks me in.

 

[Tzara]

1

Crèche

I want to meet you,
perhaps in a restaurant
where we would drink coffee
or Coke, yet bond

as if our paper cups
became glue. I want to touch
your words,
because they are all I have

of you. I want,
oh my, I so want you
that, dammit:
Please accept

this cursory snug,
with our cheeks
sweetly nestled
as if they were happy birds.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

week 1 . Renewal

I know the light appears
earlier now in the east
as I finish my yoga
yet frost is what's revealed
outside my window.
The nascent year stretches out
so slowly we hardly notice
the extra vivid time
but the sun strengthens
with each morning and
the birds have new vigour
crowding the food hungrily.
Soon Sureya Namaskara will be
a true salute to the new year.

 

[Remec]

Week 1: Resolved

Scraps of paper lie about
my brain as I scribble idle
mental thoughts about
how best to work on

improving diet or finances
or the lack of relations I
have with pretty much all
of my family--even the ones

who are actually in-town,
not more than a five minute
drive during the busiest time
of the day, but they're less

actual notes and more like
virtual Post-Its I'm just going
to let hang about until the
glue finally dries and they

drop away like forgotten
champagne bubbles at
five seconds past midnight.

 

[butters]

no.1

it is said the yogi weeps
face buried in wooden palms
but i taste no trace of tears
sense, instead, a hiding
a closing off of light that
his great head might process
the world in a different way

interesting experiment
but . . . to be fixed that way forever?

it is said the yogi weeps

 

[Angeline]

.....

 

[Desejo]

1948: Amman

Two rooms
Two hundred steps
to the parched amphitheater
Two rooms

Five hundred fifty two steps
to the tired drip of water
I walk it sleeping
I am never awake

Eight children
one bed
Seven hundred thousand refugees
one city

Two rooms

 

[Tzara]

Oh, baby.

What a week. Wow.

Superior poems by everyone. And I mean superior.

OK, then. Only 51 weeks to go.

(Oh, yeah. Anyone who cares to join only needs to do 51 weeks now.

As if that makes it easier.)

 

[Desejo]

Mr Tzara (Mr. T, ha!)
What is the protocol for commenting on these poems? Or everyone actually. Should we comment in the thread, or separately? My Lit new year's resolution is to ask questions and comment more thoughtfully on poems here and on Lit. All of these are worth discussion!
Thanks

 

[Tzara]

Mr Tzara (Mr. T, ha!)

I am not going to say anything like I pity the Fool! so just get that out of your mind right now.

What is the protocol for commenting on these poems? Or everyone actually. Should we comment in the thread, or separately? My Lit new year's resolution is to ask questions and comment more thoughtfully on poems here and on Lit. All of these are worth discussion!
Thanks

Just comment in the thread. I'd suggest you not quote the entire poem, as the author may want to try and submit a poem to some journal and they are all cranky about "previous publication," but if you just quote enough to identify the poem you're commenting on (title, first line, say) you should be OK.

 

[Desejo]

I am not going to say anything like I pity the Fool! so just get that out of your mind right now.
Just comment in the thread. I'd suggest you not quote the entire poem, as the author may want to try and submit a poem to some journal and they are all cranky about "previous publication," but if you just quote enough to identify the poem you're commenting on (title, first line, say) you should be OK.

Pity this fool, Tzara. I'll willingly do that but I don't understand how that avoids "previous publication". Is the theory that the author could delete their post here, but not if someone else quoted and commented on it? Do the publishers do a search on the net to find things? I've been meaning to ask about this. Because really...I don't get it.

 

[Angeline]

.....

 

[Tzara]

Pity this fool, Tzara. I'll willingly do that but I don't understand how that avoids "previous publication". Is the theory that the author could delete their post here, but not if someone else quoted and commented on it? Do the publishers do a search on the net to find things? I've been meaning to ask about this. Because really...I don't get it.

The answer to the first question is "yes"--when the entire poem is quoted, the author can't delete the poem from the thread (at least not without some assistance from the person who quoted the poem).

The answer to the second is "sometimes, perhaps."

The problem is that most journals are not interested in work that has been previously "published." Some go so far as to state that something that has appeared on the Internet, even in one's personal blog, is considered to have been published.

Traditionally, poets here (and at other writing sites I have posted to) think of work appearing here as being workshopped--that they are drafts, and as such pending revision and open for comment by other poets. Not finished work, in other words.

What an individual editor thinks of this is pretty idiosyncratic. Some seem to think that if any part of a poem has appeared in any form on the Internet--even in a private forum--then it violates their submissions policy. Some don't mind if it has been previously published.

It's a confusing area of publication rights.

Then there is the whole problem of the Great Internet Cache, which puts a whole different spin on things. (When you delete something, does it really get deleted or can someone still find it in Google's cache?)

I just think it's better practice to not quote the entire poem, but that's a suggestion rather than a rule. I don't even always follow it myself.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[Angeline]

......

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[Angeline]

.......

 

[Tzara]

2

Practical Geology

My perfect love
is a stone. Not centered,
but one placed

a bit left and high
on your doorstep. Near
where your newspaper

usually lands, wet,
in that puddle.
Please remember, though, it is rock,

and that it is shaped
as smooth
and permanent as a old river stone.

 

[Tzara]

Dear Tzara.
I rewrote the first stanza of a new poet on Lit as an example and posted it to my comment on said poem. Does my contribution belong to me or have I some how screwed the pooch?
Signed Anxious

Dear Anxious:

Do you hear an anguished yelp or a happy bark?

Anyone who posts a poem here should assume their poem might be quoted, tweaked, commented upon, abused, ridiculed, praised, or whatever. That just comes with the territory. I'm merely suggesting that we think about how we quote things.

Anyway, if you truly rewrote said poem, it likely would not be recognized by the Thought Police, would it?

Rewriting others' poems is an area of concern, though. I think from an intellectual property point of view it would depend on how much the poem is your contribution vs. how much it is someone else's. It's OK for me to write a poem inspired, even based on, Yeats's "Leda and the Swan," but not OK for me to essentially copy parts of it and claim it as mine.

So, depending on what you appropriated. I would at least acknowledge the inspiration, if nothing else.

Oh, and if you posted your changes as comments or suggestions on the original, then those I would think belong to the receiver of the comments. Not you. You offered them as suggestions to the original writer, not as an "original" poem.

But I am not an intellectual property attorney. In fact, I am no attorney at all.

In any case, stop looking at canine bottoms. It's unseemly.

tz

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

We've had challenges here in the past where we write a poem that works in a line or two from other poems submitted here at Lit. We'd start the challenge with a thread asking for participants, and anyone who was "in" understood that their poems here were fair game to be pillaged (well at least for a line or two). Then when we submitted those poems, we'd each attribute the other authors' lines in a note added to the poem.

I think we should do that again, there are enough fresh faces to make it feel new - well, not re-heated leftovers.

Tzara, why not start a companion thread to this one for comments, questions, etc., and ask one of the mods to move these posts there so this thread is for poems only?

Seconded - companion threads have worked well in the past.