View from Highway One, Big Sur, California
Getting back to my poetry
workshop in Big Sur a couple to weeks ago, I’ll give you some fun prompts where
we were asked to write poems using a list of prescribed words. We also
discussed:
- Controlling image poem – where an image, such as a tree or a broom, is something for the readers to hang onto while the poem takes us for a ride.
- Long armed poem – scoops in a lot of information, goes on and on, and is tied together in the end – somehow.
- Leap poem – where the poet leaps into seemingly unrelated material and then ties it all together by asking a question or making a statement over and over. It’s also possible to write a leap poem by telling a story and then leaping into metaphor.
- Lyric poem – it has a song-like element that uses repetition of words and sounds, also asks a question or makes a statement over and over. Rhyme could definitely work here as well.
- Persona poem – a monologue in the voice of the character the poem is about.
Here’s
three lists of words:
- feet, room, someone, stormy, vague, silence, nerves, glass, name of a plant, name of month, the phrase: “I have met them” or “speaking of.”
- bond, racket, heaven, iron, refrain, forgive, briefcase, gallop, engine, proper, name of person or place, the phrase: “I don’t know” or “I know.” Also include a spell or incantation.
- dowry, office, packet, sand, mourn, break, thrush, ritual, galaxy, barge, the phrase: “I was not a stranger.”
And my very rough draft of
a long armed poem using the words in list 1, highlighted in yellow.
Stop and Go
On the drive up the coast
I pass through Vista del
Mar
with the Pacific Ocean
on my left.
This morning it looks like
silver glass.
I get on the 405 chugging
along
through the construction
at Sunset
the Getty, Skirball, and
the depths of
the San Fernando Valley.
It is alternating stop and
go
with bursts of 80 mile an
hour straight-aways.
My mind wanders, not
paying enough
attention to my audio
book,
Mary Coin,
about that
iconic Okie lady
photographed
by my favorite Dorothea
Lange.
But this is fiction.
No one knows the real Mary
or even if her name was
Mary.
And then when I need a
breather
I can’t find a parking
place
at my regular rest stop.
So I keep going
moving my feet about the floor
one pushing down on the pedal
the other pumping in and
out
trying to soothe the vague pain
in my left calf.
I press my hands on the
ceiling
one after the other
but my car has no room
for a full stretch.
Once I pass Santa Barbara
the hills are vast with mustard,
the sky stormy,
gray like those lingering
at home
for the last few months.
I turn off the radio
and relish the silence
of driving alone and
thinking
about getting to my
healing place.
It will calm my nerves
after last week.
I had a blood clot ruled
out.
That was lucky. If it was
positive
I wouldn’t be here writing
this.
The same day my husband
had
carpel tunnel surgery,
the next, a seven-foot
hole
that looked like a grave
dug in my garden.
And I served dinner
Saturday night
for ten good friends.
We ate sushi, Tzatziki,
chicken, swordfish
and my mother’s Peach Ping
dessert
made from this season’s
sweetest bounty.
We talked about six
degrees of separation,
who do you know,
and what a small world
this is
while we tried desperately
not to think of Margaret’s
recurring cancer,
her sad, scared eyes,
her thin body looking
thinner yet
in all black
as we hope someone
somewhere will find
a miracle cure for her.
Yes, this is August.
I’m driving up to Big Sur
like I do every year.
It’s my time
to write some poems.
Speaking of,
this is one of them.
How about giving it a try yourself?
