Clerihew is a poetry form that I have heard of, but I had never written one. So today, thanks to inspiration by Janice Scully, I’ll give it a go.
Janice wrote two beautiful Clerihews for Kamala and Joe. She ended her post with this challenge: “Perhaps there is someone you would like to celebrate with a clerihew. If you do sometime, please share them.”
Yes, there is, so this is my sometime. I know clerihews are usually about someone famous. So here is my oldest daughter–famous to me! I couldn’t stop at four lines, so I guess I still haven’t written a clerihew.
To My Daughter Maria
Knitter, sewist, vaccine chauffeur
Plant and pup mom, entrepreneur
Decorator, baker, contributor, cook
Friend and quilter, connoisseur of books
Skills abounding, not just a few
Your super power is being you
In the 1930’s America created a middle class. It was perhaps better than having only extreme wealth and extreme poverty, but it was created with white supremacy at the core. My family benefited from the G.I. Bill after WWII. My parents were able to buy a home. Then in the 70s, because of strong unions and a good part-time job, I was able to “put myself through” a California State University, which was tuition-free then! My husband worked full time with his union job in a grocery store and put himself through a private college with no loans, even saving money for grad school while he did it.
Now, look at all the black veterans who came home from serving in WWII. Systemic racism kept them from taking advantage of the benefits of The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. The same Act that allowed my family to buy a home in the suburbs. Though we were not wealthy, my husband and I came from home-owning families, admission to colleges, and other benefits of being white.
It is time to dig deep and pull out our roots of racism. There are reparations to make. We need to redistribute government aid that is being showered on the wealthy.
I don’t know why “reparations” is such a bad word to white people.
The Story of Being White in ‘Murica
There’s a story in this place.
A father came home from faraway war,
part of the Greatest Generation,
but broken into pieces.
His country helped him pick up those pieces,
cobbling them together with a home loan
and hope from his wife and twins
There’s a story in this place
Five more children came along
and grew up in an L.A. suburb
a stone’s throw,
but a universe away,
from the burning riots
in the redlines of Watts in ’65
There’s a story in this place
A story where all those kids
grew up, not wealthy, but they had
available healthcare,
safe water and air,
funded schools, food security,
safe contact with police
because they were white people
Black and brown people lived
in other neighborhoods.
All those kids grew up
and became home owners
and got jobs that could sustain a family
With scholarships, part time union jobs,
and free tuition–
some of the kids in that suburb
even graduated from university
and became professionals
There’s a story over there
A story of America built
on the backs and blood
of labor stolen
A story I closed my eyes to,
A story heard only
through sanitized textbooks
A continuing story I don’t know
A story of black colleges
bursting at their seams,
“white” colleges unavailable to them,
no room for all the GIs who wanted to go
It’s a story of black veterans
who fought for America
but couldn’t get a loan
A story of black neighborhoods redlined
A story of discrimination that persists today
It is time to brush aside McConnell’s redline
for no new taxes for the wealthy
It is time to shift spending priorities
and lift up the working class
It’s five generations too late for
Forty acres and a mule
Well past time
a poem advances truth
and briefs the sleuth
a poem caresses cheeks
and dams up leaks
a poem enlarges hearts
and flings safe darts
a poem glistens with glitter
and harnesses the quitter
a poem ignites understanding
and justifies demanding
a poem keeps a tune
and launches to the moon
a poem mushrooms thoughts
and nests in tight spots
a poem opens us to find
and parks in the mind
a poem quickens senses
and refashions fences
a poem sizzles in the pan
and transforms our plan
a poem uncovers sin
and validates within
a poem weaves a story
and x-rays allegory
a poem yanks our smugness
and zaps us with justness
By Denise Krebs
After Irene Latham
Today is Poetry Friday with Irene Latham at Live Your Poem as host. Visit her blog and learn more about Irene’s new verse novel D-39: A Robodog’s Journey, which is coming out on Tuesday. My poem is after Irene’s poem called, “A Poem for the Girl by the Lake.”
Sonia has been writing Golden Shovel poems each day in April and May on her blog: Rants of the Newly Old. I read this post last Tuesday for her Slice of Life. Her Golden Shovel poems are based on one of the headlines she reads each day. Each word in the headline becomes the last word in a line of a poem.
Today I heard a quote in an interview with Joe Biden that I decided to use in my own Golden Shovel. He was talking about why he’s an optimist and always keeps the best of people and builds on the positive in his relationships. He said, “I believe in redemption, for myself, as well.”
Of course, redemption is such a full and beautiful word. I couldn’t help but think of Jesus Christ, who is the one inspiring Joe Biden to stay so optimistic. So I wrote this Golden Shovel poem today as if Jesus were talking to the woman in John 8:2-11, a story that’s been on my mind all week.
Every bent branch I
Will lift up. Do believe
You are restored in
Me with no regrets, only redemption.
Recovery and release for
All that weighs heavily. Myself,
I am grace enough, as
The eyes of your heart see: you are well.
Sunshine appeared, darkness fled. Will-o’-the-wisp? No. Light came And the stars were sent to bed. Bayou’s verdant carpet frames Our feasting on today’s bread. Content with these gifts to claim.
I enjoyed hearing Heather’s multiple readings of the prose poem called “The Fable of the Sailor and the Kraken.” It is amazing how much more you can learn by hearing it again and again.
I like a quote she shared by Jane Anne Phillips about the difference between traditional poetry shapes and short prose. I’ve written a longer quote here:
“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I taught myself to write by writing one-page fictions. I found in the form the density I needed, the attention to the line, the syllable. I began writing as a poet. In the one-page form, I found the freedom of the paragraph. I learned to understand the paragraph as secretive and subversive. The poem in broken lines announces itself as a poem, but the paragraph seems innocent, workaday, invisible.”
~Field Guide by Jane Anne Phillips
Heather challenged us to use assonance in our prose poem about an encounter with a mythological beast representing the unknown and see if it “might unearth a new mystery about what it means to be human.” I’m glad she also added: “Don’t feel the need to explain. Let the mystery stay a mystery.”
To research which mythological creature I might write about, I went to this list on Wikipedia, looking for something that struck me about an unknown battling my humanity. I chose Will-o’-the-Wisp for my poem.
The Traveler and the Will-o’-the-Wisp
The byway through the bog darkened with each step, cracked with the crust of rotting creatures. When she first saw the flutter above the fen in the distance she remembered once reading the advice to not follow the lights but to use her own candles. Maybe it’s just fool’s fire, she thought; she wanted desperately to avoid the company of the dead. She had read Milton, so she hesitated, wondering if it was really leading or was this “hovering and blazing with delusive light”?
The Will-o’-the-Wisp had always wandered the earth, relentlessly beckoning travelers, leading them away from their true destinations. The Wisp radiated a glowing beam when she turned and walked toward it.
Each day in May I watch for an opportunity or inspiration to write a new poem, and then I post it on my blog. Today, I decided to experiment with making a new poetry form. It’s a cross between two forms that I’ve seen lately. The 4×4 form is a slight variation on the Quatern, influenced by the Tricube that Matt Forrest has been sharing and writing lately.
Here are the four by four “rules” I followed:
4 syllables in each line
4 lines in each stanza
4 stanzas
4 times repeating a refrain line–line 1 in the first stanza, line 2 in the second stanza, line 3 in the third stanza, and line 4 in the fourth stanza.
Bonus: 4 syllables in the title
No restrictions on subject, rhyme, or meter.
Voting Questions
Ask the questions:
Is voting a
right? Or is it
only for those
we agree with?
Ask the questions:
MAGA members?
Progressives? All?
Do citizens
all get to vote?
Ask the questions:
Or just those who
preserve ballot
box “purity”?
Jim Crow reborn?
Ask the questions.
About this poem: I’ve been thinking about voting rights a lot lately, as have many of the state legislatures in the U.S. Voter suppression is as old as the nation, which was founded with boatloads of voter restrictions. Today states that in 2020 ran fair and honest elections with record turnouts are still making new laws so that fewer votes will be cast next time. Some of those state legislatures even had their “favored” candidates win, yet they are still passing laws. Insurance, I guess.
Do you want to try a 4×4 poem? Please do share!
May 28, 2021 follow-up. Here are some 4×4 posts with beautiful examples from the Poetry Friday community:
Yesterday I went to the Hatch, a “virtual coffee shop where together we write” hosted by Suleika Jaouad, author of Between Two Kingdoms and founder of The Isolation Journals. I grabbed this screenshot during our session. Of course, there were really a hundred or so people writing together, but I took this photo because I found it fun to think about writing with these two, cozy in the same home in New England, and me writing here in Bahrain.
Carmen Ridley shared this passage for inspiration, from Adrienne Rich’s Sources:
To say no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors… I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, and perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.
—Adrienne Rich, Sources
Carmen’s prompt:
Imagine a world that can contain the multitudes you encompass. Where there is space for the paradoxes inside yourself. Where you can be a warrior and weep. How do people speak to each other? What do they make and build? Where do they live? How do they solve problems, raise children, grow their food? How do they war? Where do they weep?
I didn’t get much further than how people would speak and listen to each other in this imagined world. My poem inspired by Carmen’s prompt:
Imagine a world where pain could be tamed
where we didn’t have to be afraid
to take off our preservers of pretense
(Those other masks we’ve worn our lives long)
A world we could share our depths
and expanse with each other
Imagine a world where every word we spoke
was caught by listeners, brave and true.
Weeping, laughing, alive listeners
nesting with us in the pain,
helping us handle the hurts
without burning our hands
Imagine a world where receptivity
reigns and revelation is the result,
iron sharpening iron, each of us
no longer alone together,
but treasuring the beauty of the other–
bearing, hoping, enduring our weaknesses
Imagine a world where doubts become sorted,
obstacles become opportunities,
hopes become renewed,
where we all listen with delight
and solve with intent a launching
of liberty and justice for all.
Magical Magicicada
The largest emergence
of periodical cicadas
is coming. Brood X’s lives begin
when laid by their mamas in the treetops
in 2004. The tiny nymphs hatch and
soon take a leap of faith
from the crown of bounty
to the ground below
burrowing in to find roots
under the thicket of their birth,
where they suckle on the sap–
xylem, their drink of choice
They live in the netherworld
sucking and digging
Developing those eyes, the ancients say,
by staring into the fires of Hades
Benjamin Banneker,
mathematician,
astronomer,
writer, and
skillful life observer
followed Brood X
(before it was called Brood X)
from 1749, 1766, and 1783,
then predicted their 1800 emerging.
Before he noticed the pattern,
the cicadas still punctually
made their prime time
passage to paradise for
many millennia.
Since 1800, as Banneker declared,
like clockwork, the majority of Brood X
burrows up every 17 years
(some stragglers come in years
before and after their designated showing)–
1800, 1817, 1834, 1851, 1868, 1885,
1902, 1919, 1936, 1953, 1970, 1987,
2004, 2021, and so on into the future.
Billions or trillions are coming
when the soil temperature warms
and they make a break for it.
Then they will have work to do.
First, they split
their skin and escape
from their nymph stage
molting overnight,
taking time
to dry out
their new duds
Next, it’s time for these teens
to find love with a two-part concert
Big boy band sings cicada songs
Because males are the only ones
who tote the musically-
impressive tymbal organ.
Paired with their mostly hollow abdomen
these kettledrums of insecta
amplify their sound up to 100 decibels.
The first in their set is Song of Sorting–
Magicicada septendecim
Magicicada cassinii
Magicicada septendecula
each of the three Brood X species
congregate onto different trees.
Then they are ready for their
segregated second song in the set
called Courtship Song
The father of future nymphs
sings a mating tune
to woo his partner
In the meantime, though,
predators aplenty
are feasting on the
fresh flesh of the
recently-arrived cicadas.
Neighborhood cats and dogs,
possums, birds, squirrels,
bats, wasps, spiders
and even humans.
None planned this menu, but
everyone eats cicadas.
But no worries: Brood X
overwhelms the enemies
with their blessed bulk of billions,
allowing their predators to
indulge in a gluttonous gorge,
like a long Thanksgiving day.
In predator satiation
everyone gets a full tummy.
Finally the remaining are safe,
which is enough–
Survival of the leftovers.
The leftovers not only survive,
but they thrive to carry on their species.
The female responds to the mating tune
She flicks her wings in a sassy yes
to courtship and procreation.
They mate and then separate–
The male to sing and score again,
The female to climb higher
and lay hundreds of eggs
in twigs of branches in the tree.
These cicadas who’ve make it
safely through the feeding frenzy
of the predators
are among the longest-living
insects in the world. Though,
they stumble into the daylight
while already in their twilight.
In just a month to six weeks.
the adults are dead.
The process continues.
Nymphs leap into
their future
and life goes on–
we pray–until we await
their visit in 2038.
