(ad)ventures in poetry
We turn the hands ahead one hour Like clockwork every spring And call it Daylight Saving Time, Which is a most peculiar thing. Daylight doesn’t come in coins As dimes and pennies do. You can’t put it in a piggy bank And hear a clink as it drops through. Still, I’ve always wished that I Could stay up half the night— If I had some daylight savings, That’s how I’d spend the light.
This past Sunday daylight saving time took effect in the U.S. Peace to your ♥!
Those who are word nerds like me, or who recall their grade-school English class well, will immediately notice that I’ve misspelled alliteration. Never fear; all is well. I purposely spelled it that way for the greater good of poetry.
Alitteration
Pages of poems partially penned
are prone to proliferation,
producing plentiful piles of pieces of paper
and a plethora of alitteration.
© Stephanie Malley
Playing with words this way is, for better or worse, how my mind works. I recently saw the word unintentionally misspelled illiteration, and I began toying with turning that into a poem. “Sharon has the sniffles / Miles has the mumps / Daniel’s dachshund is down in the dumps….” It’s not much of a leap (for me at least!) to considering “Oblitteration” as the title for a poem about incinerating trash found on a daily walk. The English language can be frustrating–I still get mixed up over two r‘s or two f‘s in terrific–but also loads of fun.
Peace to your ♥ !
You see them on their lounge chairs, lined up in a row like fish sticks. Or perhaps hot dogs, complete with “grill marks” from the chair when they get up for a swim. But maybe it only similes that way to me. :)
Cookout
Bronze bodies poolside, Julying in the sun:
Coat both sides with sunscreen; fry until done.
© Stephanie Malley
(Caveat: Frying until done is fine in the poem, but I don’t recommend it in real life.)
Peace to your ♥!
I would be a far worse poet without my trusty companions: The Scholastic Rhyming Dictionary by Sue Young, published 1994, for ages 8 and up (and up! did the publishers ever dream it would be used by a 50-plus-year-old?); and The New American Roget’s College Thesaurus in Dictionary Form, revised 1985.
As you can see, I actually own two of the rhyming dictionaries and two of the thesauruses. (Thesauri is also correct, but it sounds too refined for humble paperbacks.) They’re handy reference guides, and you can’t get any handier that having one at your fingertips upstairs and another at your beck and call downstairs. (Click on the link and the eggcorn link within it for some fascinating reading.)
If I’m honest with myself, I don’t need doubles. I bought the second copies when the first began showing signs of wear. Not to panic or anything, but I really, really like these specific editions, and I wouldn’t want all the used copies to get bought up and leave me stranded for rhymes and synonyms. Several years back I did buy a large-print thesaurus–my eyesight, always bad, is steadily getting worse–but it was a bust. I hated the format. If, down the road, I have to crouch over the pages of my tried-and-true thesaurus with a magnifying glass, so be it. :)
Peace to your ♥ !
Three Cheers for Mr. Roget
Hip, hip, hooray for Mr. Roget
For creating the thesaurus for us.
Any writer who wants that perfect nuance,
Variation, modulation, shade, subtlety, nicety,
Fine point, distinction, suggestion, innuendo or hint
Has only to look in Roget’s treasure book—
Three cheers for him and his synonyms.
© Stephanie Malley
The (ad)venture begins. Actually it began a half-dozen years ago, when I churned out one poem after another over a two-week period. This was unusual.
I had written poems before: a parody of “The Raven” with a gym teacher nag, nag, nagging a student to get up for school; short verses for birthday cards; a group of five poems about trees (lyrical, narrative, apostrophe, and two other approaches I can’t recall). This was different.
I felt as though I was channeling the spirit of some tragically departed poet who needed to “get it all out” before resting in peace. It was a heady, harrowing time, and at the end of it I had a binder of poems that gave me great pleasure when I reread them. And reread them. And…. They were my babies, you know. I had a mother’s love for them.
While the outpouring of poetry didn’t last, the habit of putting my poems into binders did. I’ll be drawing from four binders’ worth in my posts as well as sharing newly-written poems. Nothing obscurely deep. Nothing overly serious. Lots of lighter verse and poems for the young and young at heart. Maybe a few will become a bit like family to you.
Peace to your ♥!
Family Tree
I’ve always been a bit amazed
how one poem begets another.
I work on one and think I’m done,
then—whoops! here comes its brother.
Uncles, aunts, and in-laws,
First and second cousins,
I started off with just one poem—
Now I’ve written dozens!
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised
by this genealogy:
My poems have always felt a bit
like family to me.
© Stephanie Malley
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