What's a Serial Deconstruction Poem?

Howdy, Campers and Happy Poetry Friday! 

I am feeling particularly happy today. I've been dealing with a stupid health issue and have been in pain for quite a while. But guess what? 

NO PAIN last night! No pain today! 

And: it's SUNNY again in So Cal! Not rainy, not wildly windy. 

So: No pain, a sun-shiny day, two poems in a new anthology, and Poetry Friday...what more could a girl ask for?

At the end of this post is the Poetry Friday link, info about my summer class, and my poems from Pomelo Books' newest anthology, What is a Family?

Our topic this round is "Offer our readers a writing exercise or prompt." 

Like many friends in the Poetry Friday family, I write a poem a day. Surely I'm not alone when I say that sometimes my brain stands up, puts on its coat says, "Nope. No ideas. I'm outta here."

So the other day when my brain walked out of the room, I took these two phrases from a friend’s email:

·        1) delicate balance

·         2) I wanted to stab my hand with a fork

an   ...and began playing with them. I sliced the second sentence into pieces with which to start new lines:

======================== 

DELICATE BALANCE

I wanted to slice watermelon but you wanted

to stab a steak or maybe spear a pimento olive.

My hand hesitated. I offered you a fig, which you ate

with a fork.

 

DELICATE BALANCE

I wanted it to stop. I wanted

to stab the newspaper, rip it to shreds, or swipe right with

my hand. After, I went to the ocean and made circles in the sand

with a fork.

 

DELICATE BALANCE

I wanted to find the pulse of a poem. I wanted

to stab this page with surprise.

My hand wants that, too. But it’s distracted by that guy

with a fork.

 

DELICATE BALANCE

I wanted stars, stars, and stars

to stab this night. I wanted to lift

my hand to them, conducting their murmurs

with a fork.

 

DELICATE BALANCE

I wanted you to speak,

to stab that diaphanous curtain.

My hand goes to my lips. You are, you are! I listen

with a fork halfway to my mouth.

 

DELICATE BALANCE

I wanted to call this exercise How

to Stab a Sentence to Death. But

My hand disagreed. Hands are very opinionated, especially hands

with a fork.

poems © 2022 April Halprin Wayland

===============

It was a so much fun! I asked my husband what I should call this form. He was eating at the time. He said, "Serial Deconstruction. Or," he said, looking down at his granola, "you could call it Cereal Deconstruction."

Ha!

I like presenting these poems in groups. Try it. Let me know how it goes!

=============
Many of you know Pomelo Books ~ I call them the publisher with the 💗big heart💗. At its helm are Sylvia Vardell and Janet S. Wong, the proud parents of their newest book, WHAT IS A FAMILY? born on March 31st. 

The 40 ekphrastic poems in this book—inspired by a wide variety of diverse and inclusive black-and-white photos—explore extended families, blended families, classmates and sports teams as families, animal families, and family occasions such as birthdays, holidays, weddings, funerals, and much more.

As with the companion book WHAT IS A FRIEND? and also their books in the "THINGS WE" series (THINGS WE DO; THINGS WE EAT; THINGS WE FEEL; THINGS WE WEAR), 100% of the profits will be donated by this truly big-hearted publisher to the IBBY Children in Crisis Fund (IBBY.org). (Worth joining; I'm a member.)

Here are my ekphrastic poems from WHAT IS A FAMILY?:

CLASSROOM

PUPPIES!

And once again I'll be teaching a one day, three-hour class called ​​Intro to Writing Children's Poetry for the Big-Hearted, Brave,and Curious​! (my title, not necessarily UCLA's). It's on Wednesday, July 12th from noon-3pm PST. The course won't be visible until April 10th; Summer enrollment opens April 24th. 

Tah-dum! I started writing this happy, and I'm ending it happy that 

Margaret is hosting Poetry Friday!

Poetry Friday logo by Linda Mitchell

Reminder: I'd love to hear about your own Serial Deconstruction poems! 

I keep bubbling, I know, but one more thing to leave you with. I've been listening to Leonard Bernstein conduct his playful Overture to Candide. It lifts me. Maybe it will lift you, too.

Posted with love by April Halprin Wayland 

with help from Kitty, seen here on my desk, helping me work 

(she's another thing that makes me happy):

                                                                      

Celebrating a New Friendship-Themed Poetry Anthology

In honor of Poetry Friday, today I'm celebrating the recent release of What Is a Friend?, an anthology of ekphastic poems edited by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong and published by Pomelo Books.  I'm honored to have one of my poems, which I share below, in the collection. But first, a bit about this marvelous new book for ages 7 and up.

The fun sticker on the cover indicates the anthology is a Children's Book Council "Hot Off the Press" Selection for October 2022!

Here's the description of What Is a Friend? that appears on the Pomelo Books website:

To learn to be a good friend, kids need models of friendship. The 41 poems in this book guide us in reaching out, sharing ourselves, asking for help, giving support, and just having fun. These poems also show us that friends come in many forms; we can find them in our families, at school, on sports teams, through community service, on vacation, in pets, in nature - and even in ourselves.

The website also lists the contributors. I recognize many of their names, whether from Poetry Friday posts or other anthologies I've seen. But some of these poets are knew to me. I look forward to reading all their poems:

Many talented voices are represented in this book: Gail Aldous, Marcie Flinchum Atkins, Robyn Hood Black, Willeena Booker, Sandy Brehl, Carol Bullman, Kelly Conroy, Mary E. Cronin, Linda A. Dryfhout, Janet Clare Fagal, Karen Elise Finch, Nancy Bo Flood, Patricia J. Franz, Marilyn Garcia, Van G. Garrett, Theresa Gaughan, Sara Holbrook, Irene Latham, Rebecca Gardyn Levington, Molly Lorenz, Jone Rush MacCulloch, Carmela A. Martino, Guadalupe García McCall, Rochelle Melander, Heidi Mordhorst, Elisabeth Norton, Joan Riordan, Laura Purdie Salas, René Saldaña, Jr., Michael Salinger, Donna JT Smith, Anastasia Suen, Pamela Taylor, Linda Kulp Trout, Fernanda Valentino, Charles Waters, Vicki Wilke, Matthew Winter, Janet Wong, Helen Kemp Zax, and Sarah Ziman

As with the Pomelo Books "Things We . . ." series (Things We Do; Things We Eat; Things We Feel), 100% of the profits from sales of What Is a Friend? will be donated to the IBBY Children in Crisis Fund (IBBY.org). You may recall that my poem "Amazed" appears in Things We Feel, so I now have two poems in publications from Pomelo Books. I am officially a "Pomelo Poet," and I have the logo to prove it! 😀 

My poem in What Is a Friend? is called "Sidekicks." You can see it below alongside the photo that inspired it. Special thanks to Janet Wong for creating this great graphic!

The students in the above photo are practicing tae kwon do. I have to confess that I knew nothing about this martial art before attempting the poem. My early drafts were based on online research. After sharing some drafts with my critique group, I learned fellow member and poet Eileen Meyer had actually studied tae kwon do herself. Eileen's feedback was especially helpful to my revision process! (If you don't know Eileen, she is one of three poets making up the "Rhyme Doctors" team--read more on their website.)

I hope you'll check out this week's Poetry Friday roundup hosted by Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe for links to more kidlit poetry. 

Happy Writing!
Carmela

Getting Out of the Mud with an Ekphrastic Poem

Happy Poetry Friday! You'll find my first ever ekphrastic poem below.

I have to admit: I wasn't excited at the prospect of blogging on the topic of "patience, persistence, and perseverance" today. I haven't been doing a very good job practicing any of these traits lately. Part of the reason has to do with distractions related to personal issues. But it's also because of the stage of my current writing project--I recently started submitting it to agents. My strategy is to submit to a select few agents who seem like the best match for my manuscript. Researching those agents is a slow, time-consuming process. Some days, it feels like a full-time job. And it requires a lot of that first "P:" Patience, as I wait to hear back. 

Normally, I'd use this waiting time to occupy myself with other writing projects. But the ones I've tried working on don't seem to be going anywhere. So I'm feeling a lot like this tortoise--stuck in the mud!

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Re-reading JoAnn's post for this series helped pinpoint my problem. JoAnn wrote: "I've found over the years that I feel better when I write at least a little something every day. I miss it when I don't."

I've definitely been missing writing. So I'm trying to again write "a little something" most days, if not every day. Poems are the perfect medium for this, since they can be quite short yet still satisfying.

Just this week, I learned about the Poetry Sisters' May ekphrastic poetry challenge. I don't recall having ever written an ekphrastic poem before. So, even though I'm too late to be part of the challenge, I thought I'd try my hand at writing one for today. My first step was looking up the definition. According to this website: "An ekphrastic poem is based on a work of art. Usually, ekphrastic poems are written about a painting, but they can also be based on a sculpture, an object, or even architecture." 

The Poetry Sisters' challenge was to write about a photograph of a work of art. I decided to write my ekphrastic poem about a photograph, too--one I came across while looking for the above turtle-in-the-mud photo:

Photo by Jozsef Hocza on Unsplash

I came up with this ekphrastic haiku for the photo (and my own plight):

slow going ahead
but it feels good to be free
and moving forward

©2021 Carmela A. Martino. All rights reserved.

 

Be sure to check out this week's Poetry Friday roundup by Margaret at Reflections on the Teche.

Happy writing!
Carmela