#verselove2023 – Page 2

On Being Armed in America
A Fibonacci Poem

Here
minds
crush life
Delirious
with fear of losing–
Don’t drive. Don’t ring. And don’t mistake.

Things About You I’ve Memorized

your enthusiastic exuberance
holding you before we sleep
your faith grounded in life
your life grounded in faith
your turning phrases into rhymes
and making up songs on the spot
your hospitality that goes on and on
your work ethic and support
your self-deprecating sense of humor
your healthy ways rubbing off on me
growing old together
holding your hand
this birthday that belongs to you

April 12 #Verselove – A Poet Like Me

12/Apr/202312/Apr/2023 Denise Krebs

A Poet Like Me with Anna J. Small Roseboro, April 12, 2024

We chose a poet from among those born in the same month to inspire our poetry today. I chose a striking line for my golden shovel from a new-to-me poem Rita Dove’s “Ars Poetica”: “What I want is this poem to be small.”

Ars Poetica

What a poem needs
I don’t presume to know, but I
want it to brandish truth.
Is that fair to ask?
This fearful world needs a
poem to smack us alive,
to resuscitate trust, to
be a balm for large (even
small) wounds of our soul.

April 9 #Verselove – Breaking the Rules

09/Apr/202311/Apr/2023 Denise Krebs2 Comments

Break the Rules with Wendy Everard, April 9, 2024

Today we were breaking rules in writing poetry–grammar, poetic, life–any kind of rules and how we wanted to interpret that. I revisited my favorite e.e. cummings poem to use as a mentor. In 2020, I wrote another gratitude poem after his “I thank You God for most this amazing” here. Here’s

Most This Amazing Day
(After e.e. cummings)

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the singing worldly whistles of flyingfrees
and the birr of boundless sunstar sinew;and for everything
which is hope which is miracle which is Your yes

(You who died and turned Your grave inside out today,
and this is the Son’s rising;this is the Pax
of promise and of rescue and re-creation:
and You and you are welcome here)

April 7 – #Verselove Death in a Poem

07/Apr/202307/Apr/2023 Denise Krebs7 Comments

Death in a Poem with Denise Krebs, April 7, 2024

Today’s Poetry Friday roundup and progress on the Progressive Poem and a Fibonacci poem can be found at Margaret Simon’s Reflections on the Teche blog.

“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”

― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories

Today is Good Friday and Poetry Friday. Over at #Verselove today, I have shared a prompt about writing a poem that includes some aspect of death.

I wanted to share with you all the two powerful mentor poems I used:

Mary Oliver ties her “When Death Comes” poem to living life fully.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

Read Oliver’s full poem here.

Nikki Giovanni, in her poem “Rosa Parks,” ties the horrific death of Emmett Till with the Pullman Porters who helped him on his way to Mississippi and how, later that same year, Rosa Parks “sat back down.” Please take time to read this powerful poem. It begins:

This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would know they were not alone.

Read the rest of Giovanni’s poem here.

April 6 – #Verselove Sijo

06/Apr/2023 Denise Krebs2 Comments

Sijo with Barb Elder, April 2024

A grotesque menagerie

guards Notre Dame from vile villains.

Once almost decayed and lost,

Hugo’s novel renewed this church.

Now I gargoyle in the desert,

defended and protected.

The Organ

Who can play? Perplexing task,

bellows, wind chest, pipes pitched by length

old-fashioned, complicated;

with age we grasp, mastery reached.

Come to my organ recital:

Now, about my gall bladder.

April 5 #Verselove Poetic Drive-bys

05/Apr/202318/Apr/2023 Denise Krebs

Poetic Drive-bys with Bryan Ripley Crandall, April 5, 2024

A couple of weeks ago I took myself on a listening date and wrote a street poem with all the found things I listened to. I decided to return to this striking woman I listened to in the thrift store that day.

Hippified you are into your seventies,
taller than most, wiry and wizened,
gray hair half loosely pinned up,
half fallen around your shoulders,
your trusty fuzz-nugget beside you.
You were thrift shopping with the rest of us,
but you stood out a head above others–
both figuratively and literally–
living out loud with passion, pleasure, purpose.
You sincered us with your kindness and joy,
and we were captivated, even entertained–

Just a bit of what you said that day:
Yeah, they’re kind of hard to find.
They go fast.
Where are my gla…
Ok, I do have my glasses.
Yo, dog, let’s go.
I have something for you
{Thank you.}
You’re welcome, you’re so welcome.
It came from my heart.
I don’t know if you like it,
but I like it.
Is that in your way?

Your rarity is a treasure,
not at all in my way.

April 4 – #Verselove Grammatically Ungrammatical

04/Apr/2023 Denise Krebs

Grammatically Ungrammatical with Jennifer Guyor Jowett, April 4, 2024

When we ginger

around delicating and timiding

our adolescence

and school-days-ish

with afraidness and frailitude,

we lose and abuse.

historying

noveling

poeming

storying

representing

sacred wings

for flightfully

library wholeness

April 3 – #Verselove Word

03/Apr/202303/Apr/2023 Denise Krebs

What a Wonderful World of Words with Stacey Joy, April 3, 2024

Today I found a new word–apricity–in this rabbit hole of unique and beautiful words, as Stacey described it. When I saw that apricity means “the warm rays of sun in the winter” it brought me back to a homesick day during my first winter in frosty Iowa. I sat in the dining room in a beautiful ray of sunshine and may have felt warm for the first time in months. It was that moment I tried to capture.