Monday, April 23, 2012

Day 23 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day


Happy Day 23, everyone! I'm going to start off differently today by giving you a poem before reporting on prompts. Here are a pair of linked haiku from Catherine. Pay close attention, now.

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                        Poem removed for
publication purposes.
Sorry. It may return
at some point. Thanks.

—Draft by Catherine Pritchard Childress     [do not copy or quote ... thanks]

That one bears some thinking. And rethinking. Quite a bit of wisdom there. Sneaks up on you.

Okay. Prompts, PDQ. Maureen Thorson: ekphrastic poem — Robert Lee Brewer: morning poem — Andrea Boltwood: "noise-y" poem. Once again, I've decided to mash up all three prompts, though I said I wouldn't. I'm an inveterate masher, I guess. Or masher-upper.

Anyway, to do Maureen's ekphrasis, I needed an image to work with. When in doubt, make your own. So I took a photo today of one of my vintage electrics, a guitar I played in bands during grade school and high school. A Sears Silvertone. A lot of parents in those days (mid- to late '60s) bought their kids guitars from Sears. This is called a Silhouette, modeled loosely after the Fender Jaguar. Ironically, I eventually gravitated toward Gibson guitars, Fender's main competitor. My main six-string now is a Gibson SG. Anyway, held the Silhouette up to the sky and snapped this shot with my phone.


Head to the Sky
— after Elizabeth Bishop
The sun, a ruddy egg poised on the pale wavery horizon, rose like a shimmery balloon into a bright robin's egg cumulus-clustered sky. Trees whispered their breezy sussurus into the thin violet haze of early morning. redburst
finish
 
On the spaceport’s wide, white concrete, cracked and overgrown with green, the vast ship stood warming, its mirror-like engine housing thrumming and steaming with liquid oxygen. A single chrome fin arced upward like a pointing arm. whammy
bar
 
On the side of the spaceship, its massive magenta hull plated with cardinal and amber ceramic armor, the shiny bubbles of the bridge and engine room lit up like angular bars of silver soap, chrome lozenges flashing morning sunlight back to the heavens. silverfoil
pickups
 
The sleek thin parallel armatures of the faster-than-light drive streamed from the black base of the ship’s tail, laddering up to its stiletto nose, high in azure air, pointing like a slim spike, a bright arrow, set to needle into the bleak vacuum of interstellar space. slinky
strings
 
With the blaring clamor of a thousand thunderstorms, a million Jimi Hendrix feedback howls, his Woodstock “Star Spangled Banner” magnified a billionfold, the gigantic space ark Silhouette, a handmade Titan larger than a city, rose like a majestic frigate into the air, poised like a resplendent phoenix on its column of fire, this final vessel of humankind, leaving behind a ruined, exhausted Earth, this last sliver of Homo sapiens flinging itself outward into the obsidian brightness of the universe. rock
and
roll

—Draft by Vince Gotera     [do not copy or quote ... thanks]

So there you go: an ekphrastic poem, set in the morning, with over-the-top soundplay. Whaddayathink?

Today we feature poem-a-day blog Marilyn Cavicchia, Editor and Poet. Marilyn has been writing marvelous April poems — I particularly like her parody on Day 15 of William Blake's "The Tyger" (with its own humorous "y" misspelling). This blog is also somewhat of a business venture for Marilyn . . . so if you need an editor, etc., dig deeper into this blog and what Marilyn has to offer.


Okay, that's it for today. As usual, please leave a comment below. See you tomorrow! Ingat.


P.S. Catherine's poem for Day 19 is up at the post for that day. Take a look!

P.P.S. I added another morel mushroom photo to yesterday's post. Check it out. Yum!


POEM-A-DAY 2012 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30


9 comments:

Circletheblock said...

“its stiletto nose, high in azure air, pointing like a slim spike,” made me shimmy a little! I just love all these words. The picture you took and the picture you wrote are stunning. What a wonderful thing to wake up to! Thanks, Vince!

Anonymous said...

Wow ... three prompts at once, and all handled so well. I like the idea of a guitar as a spaceship. Also, the sun as a ruddy egg. Well done! And thank you so much for featuring me -- I'm honored and grateful.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Andrea, this is the first blog post of the day for me, on a day when I read another 40-50 and they're going to have a hard time topping this, in fact, with three excellent poems here I'm confident they won't. A wonderful rumination in Preying; I love your over the top soundplay and the entire concept of Head to the Sky, I’d pay to see it in concert; and such fun with The Pancayke. Great stuff today!

Anonymous said...

Vince, I would be absolutely thrilled to have my poem featured here. Many thanks for offering!
(Blogger keeps logging me in as "Anonymous," but this really is jenniferbullis.wordpress.com)

Vince Gotera said...

Andrea, what a nice comment. Thanks! Just workin da noize for ya: azure/air, stiletto/slim, high/like/spike. Thanks for the compliments.

Vince Gotera said...

Marilyn, it's my pleasure and honor. And thank you for your generous comment.

Vince Gotera said...

Many thanks to you too, Anna. I'll make sure that Catherine and Marilyn see your comment.

Vince Gotera said...

Jennifer aka Anonymous ... got it. Our feature of your blog will go live whenever C and I finish our poems for Day 24. Thanks for saying yes!

Kim said...

Nice Vince. I like it.




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