Category: My Poetry

My Inauspicious Return

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, New Things, Poetry, Reading1 Comment

Virtual life had to give way to real life for the last 3 days, so I will carry National Poetry Month three days into May in order to fulfill my stated purpose of a poem a day in celebration of poetry.

Today’s device from William Packard’s The Poet’s Dictionary:  A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices is (oh, dear)

    Limerick:  Usually anonymous five-line light verse poem, generally with surprise or eccentric RHYMES, with first and second and fifth lines in anapestic trimeter [ . . / . . /. . / ], and with a rhyme scheme of a/a/b/b/a.  Limericks often play on geographical or proper names, and commonly treat an outrageous subject irreverently.

    Critical comment on the limerick tends to stress its anti-literary pedigree; thus Arnold Bennett said, “All I have to say about limericks is that the best ones are entirely unprintable.”  George Bernard Shaw commented, “They are most unfit for publication.  They must be left for oral tradition.”  Film director Mike Nichols, commenting on a limerick contest he was once asked to judge said, “It was easy.  We just threw out the dirty limericks and gave the prize to the one that was left.”

    Commenting on the technical effect of a limerick, Morris Bishop wrote in The New York Times Book Review: “The structure should be a rise from the commonplace reality of line one to logical madness in line five.” Continue reading “My Inauspicious Return” →

I Cheated the Prompt, and then I Cheated Myself: April 14 Poem

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Making Mistakes, My Poetry, New Things, Poetry, ReadingLeave a comment

There is only one entry under “J” in William Packard’s The Poet’s Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices, but all is well.  My inability to write anything illustrating the particular tradition described therein has led me back to an old mountain song my grandmother used to sing, to Peggy Seeger’s website, and, ultimately, to a new poem … and maybe even a series of new poems.  Today’s device:

Jongleur:  Roughly from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, throughout France and Tuscany and northern Italy, Jongleurs were entertainers (acrobats, actors, musicians, singers) who originally wandered from town to town offering their arts for a fee.  Later, these Jongleurs became official fixtures of the various European courts as jesters, clowns, and  reciters of poetry.

At first the Jongleur did not create his own poems but drew from a repertory of ballata and canti and chansons de geste, but by the twelfth century the minstrels or trouvères or Troubadours of Provencal and Tuscany were writing their own poems to be sung.

So, the Jongleur tradition is a tradition of sharing poems through song.  Packard further explains, about the Troubadour:

The Troubadour poet (from tobar, to invent; also from trouvère, to find) usually sang of courtly love – the ethereal, extramarital praise of any Lady who inspired the poet to virtue and to moral excellence and achievement.  Sometimes the Troubadour’s songs followed specific conventions, as the following list indicates:
canzo – song of love
balada – story in verse
plante – elegy or dirge for a lost lover
serenade – evening song
alba – dawn song, when lovers realize day has come and they must part

Continue reading “I Cheated the Prompt, and then I Cheated Myself: April 14 Poem” →

Poem for April 12: Back to the Dictionary

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, New Things, Poetry, ReadingLeave a comment

Today’s poetic device from William Packard’s The Poet’s Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices, is

Haiku: Japanese short form poem, sometimes called hokku, with origins as far back as the thirteenth century. Haiku are written syllabically with seventeen separate syllables arranged in three STANZAS according to a 5/7/5 count.

Every traditional haiku uses a kigo, or season word, to specify whether the poem is of a winter, spring, summer, or autumn mood. Traditional haiku will also be characterized by rensō, or loose association of disparate images, and contain an elliptical leap from the second to the third line which simulates sudden zen satori, or enlightenment, illumination of the true nature of reality.

I was thinking about the word “Spring” earlier today, so I’ll just stay with that idea.  Here is my draft haiku for today.

“Spring.” Such a plain word.
Take note: green leaves, new buds, grass.
“Spring.” The perfect word.

Under the Wire

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn My Poetry, PoetryLeave a comment

I traveled home today from being out of town, so forgive me for skipping the poetic device prompt today.  Here is a poem that was published in Wellspring a few years back.  Thanks for reading!

Kaibab Trail
by Suzanne Baldwin Leitner

We went to what the Pink Jeep Tour guide
called the big crack in the birthday cake –
the Grand Canyon.
Headed north out of Sedona
with hordes of others:
loud and irreverent or
quiet pilgrims. Once there, a few
focused like astronauts
seeking that jumping off place
that grants vista to the whole universe.
Others couldn’t bear to turn
from their lives, bawling out the spouse
pushing their children
whining about food, weather, bathroom facilities
perpetuating fascination with gas mileage-
taking up space. Wasting film.

We were like souls departed:
boundaries fell away so we were in many times
and one thousand places.
With every fraction of a turn
of the head, a new world.
Red and flat – white and ridged – scrub green and peaking –
gold and glowing, painted with the brushes
of clouds’ shadows and sunshine
by ravens and raindrops, a copper river.
Even the heavens were desultory.
White cumulus north – gray stratus east – wisps, piles, and feathers south –
to the west, only blue or bluer.
We crept way down
into the canyon in some vain
attempt to be part of it,
trying to touch the sky, as it seemed to go down
with us – this place so vast, so mystic
we – mere parasites scuttling over its surface
incapable of understanding our host
like flies on the back of God’s hand.

April 9 Poem: Taking a Break

On By Suzanne B. LeitnerIn Intervals, My Poetry1 Comment

Hi all. I am taking a break from the Dictionary prompt today, because today was a travel day, and I am just about out of creative energy.  I did want to post a poem, however.  So with no device in mind, I give you the following poem written a couple of years ago.  Thanks for reading!

Still Life
(by Suzanne Baldwin Leitner)

She sits with no list
of things to do
no phone calls
to make
or receive
no bus to wait for
no door to listen
for or at or through.
No one to see.
Windows – glass and wood
separate her from the world
and she separates bottles
from cans, bottles and cans
from their contents,
content with numb
ticking of a clock
she won’t wind.
When she was busy
her days flew
and her nights were brief
resting places
for her mind, her fast-talking
mind. The hours
stacked neatly and quickly
one by one the way cards
stack neatly and quickly
one by one when shuffled
by the deft hands of players
taking turns dealing, too fast to see
the sly wink of Jack
or stern look of Queen
or haughty stare of King
or lonely perfection of Ace
or the scrolling and symmetry
or craft of numbers.
This day’s hours are like the turning
of pages of a magazine, glossy
slick, slow;
but there are no pictures.