Greetings, friends! My poem today is #93 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #458, including last year's Stafford Challenge poem count).
Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, pick a flower or two (or a whole bouquet, if you like) from this online edition of Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers. Now, write your own poem in which you muse on your selections’ names and meanings.”
Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a family poem.”
As usual, I am combining the prompts. The Greenaway connection is revealed within the poem.
My Mother's Sampaquita
—curtal sonnet
Mom’s favorite flower: sampaguita,
national flower of the Philippines,
known in horticulture as Jasminum
sambac. Its name comes from “sumpa kita,”
Tagalog phrase for lovers, “I promise
you.” Called Arabian or Indian
Jasmine, in Kate Greenaway’s book Language
of Flowers, this climbing vine’s blossom means
“I attach myself to you.” This sweet bloom,
white stars of fragrance, I always attach
to you, my sweet Mom.
—Draft by Vince Gotera [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Today, Alan is working with the Language of Flowers prompt. His plant is the Judas Tree and the significance is "Unbelief. Betrayal."
Redbud (Sometimes Called “Judas Tree”)
The on-air name ages like cheap mirrors whose aluminum alloy corrodes and flakes from its back, the decay like the CD rot of a later technology, the lack of care to preserve integrity over time.
A man’s pompadour does not misdirect scorn from the man.
The scent of a mouth pursed with peppermint does not mask the imagined scent of seeping bandage glimpsed below an untucked shirttail,
metallic raw pork savor of uneven stitches.
Eddie McAnnally’s connection attempted to introduce himself into WXXR during my graveyard shift.
It was not his pompadour that pissed me off,
but the realization that I was alone, and people for miles around knew it and knew where I was,
hubbing it for minimum wage, hardly gas money,
holding down a DJ job in case I ever needed another one,
keeping my options open in case I ever needed a real job if the English thing didn’t work out.
Eddie Mac would call me “Professor” on the air before I’d earned my bachelor’s degree, and he expected me to accommodate his bookie friend.
No one trusts barbershop hair tonic fragrance to mask the scent of desperate vulnerability to chance.
The Professor brooked no horseshit,
and will have walked away from fandom, pep rallies, congregations, and blood ties,
Daedalian affiliations, flying nets,
no more, forever.
Táim i mo shagart.
The door shut him out. The bolt locked him out,
like the denial I still feel when turning aside the mostly fastidious gambler who relied on Eddie Mac to admit him after hours to read the most current scores from the Associated Press teletype, information the next morning’s newspapers would offer, the whites of his watery eyes as lustrous as the streetlight’s reflection from the pearlescent saddle of his Lincoln Continental’s landau roof.
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—Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]
Amazing details, Alan. I especially savor the allusion to James Joyce's Ulysses.
I mentioned yesterday that we've been at a poetry festival — Poetry Palooza — this weekend. While at the festival we have been visiting with our friend Neta Updegraff in Des Moines, who graciously offered us her guest room. When I happened to mention the Greenaway prompt last night in conversation, Neta said, "I have that book!" And there it was: The Language of Flowers! It was interesting to actually hold the book and not just see it online. If you looked at the online version, you'll see that this is a different edition, with different illustrations.
Here are some photos of Neta's book, which she had received as a gift from her sister in years past. First, the front cover . . . quite a small book in the hand, as you can see. Then, pics of the dust jacket inside text (front flap and back flap), which give some fascinating background on how the book came to be. Following are a couple of sample pages. Finally, the intro page, with an inscription from a "Father" to a "Mother" — originally an anniversary gift from 1913 — with a sweet dedication in verse. Very interesting. No mention of Kate Greenaway, who must have put together and illustrated a larger edition later than the original book of which this is a facsimile.
Here is the text of the dedication page, since some young people now are not able to read cursive. This is written in a lovely hand.
To Mother. Wishing you many happy returns
of the day. from Father. August 8th 1913
There is a language, “little known”,
Lovers claim it as their own.
Its symbols smile upon the land,
Wrought by Natures wondrous hand;
And in their silent beauty speak,
Of life and joy, to those who seek
For Love Divine and sunny hours
In the language of the flowers.
F. W. I.
Thank you so much, Neta! A wonderful addendum to today's prompt and poems.
Thanks for coming by the blog today. See you again tomorrow?
Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks!
Ingat, everyone. ヅ |
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1 comment:
They're both very different poems, but both great.
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