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| image from The Home Gardener |
VERMICULTURE
human headline news
chewed indiscriminately
shat out as rich soil
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2015
Carol, at Carol's Corner, will join me again this year as often as possible.
Kimberley, at iWrite in Maine, is joining me this month.
Kay, at A Journey Through the Pages, is joining, too!
Hate Brings
Steve, at inside the dog, is sharing his poems
in the comments at Poetrepository.
Heidi, at my juicy little universe, will join us when she can.
Linda, at TeacherDance, will join as often as she can.
Check the comments at A Year of Reading or Poetrepository for her poems.
Kevin (Kevin's Meandering Mind) is back this year,
leaving poetry trax in the comments.
Jone, at DeoWriter, is doing a "double L" challenge.
She and I are cross-poLLinating our challenges whenever possible.
Mary Lee, I like the twist in that last line. I was expecting it to be more unambiguously negative, but the "rich soil" gives me hope that something besides hate will grow from it. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteComing up with a poem for each of these emotions is like doing some kind of meditation exercise on each. I didn't like meditating on hate. As your poem shows, we haven't really come very far (perhaps no forward movement at all??) as a people in evolving away from hate and conflict. Feeding the headlines to the worms was the only way I could get anything positive out of it...
DeleteI agree about the meditation. What's your process like? I copy the word at the top of the page, then the definition and a few synonyms from the thesaurus. Then I start listing images that go with the word. (Or puns, which always seem to come unbidden...sigh.) All those images become the seeds for that meditation, I guess.
DeleteIt's been very interesting so far. I'm finding myself fighting to be more concrete. The emotions (as nouns) are kind of abstract, I think. I'm finding that I struggle against "telling" too much background in the poem. I'll get better, I'm sure, but I wonder if this is even more of a struggle for me because the emotions are more abstract...? Just offering some observations about my own process, I guess.
Mary Lee, like your poem, mine was inspired by the news, in particular, the shooting of Wayne Scott in North Carolina.
ReplyDeleteLittle Rock, 1957
What happens to
a dream deferred?
Langston Hughes asked.
For the children at school, I
ready that photograph
of the Little Rock Nine --
the one with the mob,
mid-shout, trailing a
stoic Elizabeth Eckford
dressed in white, clutching
her books with one arm,
ram-rod straight
ahead stare, eyes
on the prize, no one
to watch her back --
and I wonder, also:
what happens
to a hatred inured?
The rhyme of "dream deferred" and "hatred inured" is brilliant.
DeleteThis is so powerful...
I agree with Mary Lee. Dream deferred/hatred inured- wow! A fifth grade teacher at my school is starting a Civil Rights unit today. I'm going to give her your poem!
DeleteI was thinking of a little girl, sad to say "me", a long ago memory, and learning. . . The news indeed is sad. Both poems take a stance which I guess most emotions evoke, different for everyone.
ReplyDeleteHate
too late to take the word back
too late to hold my tongue
no matter that I yearned to win
in this way no one won
Linda Baie © All Rights Reserved
Linda- Some big truth here for sure!
DeleteBeen there, done that...
Delete