From Writer's Digest PAD Challenge:
We’ve made it through from the beginning of the month to the end (and some have been here an extra 10 days on top of that). And for that, I am thankful. Here’s to another day, another month, and another year of poeming together!
For today’s prompt, write a praise poem. Praise your health or the taste of chocolate cake. Pen an ode to normalcy (whatever that is) or expound on the wonders of your favorite pen (for me, it’s either the Pilot G-2 or Pilot Precise V5). Have a favorite song? A favorite saying? Today is a perfect day to sing its praises.
Remember: These prompts are just springboards; you have the freedom to jump in any direction you want. In other words, it’s more important to write a new poem than to stick to the prompt.
A
ReplyDeletepoem.
A month of them.
I am amazed I did it.
I enjoyed yours too. Thank you.
I
learned to
count syllables
and about different styles
I discovered some I like.
Some
comments
about my poems
I posted were very kind.
I am learning and grateful.
Good
writing
wishes to all.
I hope to read more of them
here and there and everywhere!
Lovely. In the mood I've been in, it even choked me up a bit. Are you interested in continuing? Once a week rather than every day? The prompts would be made up by the poets, and you would have your turn at that too.
DeleteI loved it too.
DeleteYes please.
DeleteWell done, and praise. You have really done a good job both here and in your other 29. Thanks for your participation.Hope you will continue.
DeleteNeruda
ReplyDeletedid it best in his
Odas Elementales
poems in praise of
simple things
like an artichoke or a
pair of socks
even a right
wing critic who
hated Neruda
and all his poems
and everything
he stood for wrote
If communism
can inspire
Neruda
to write such poems
maybe it’s not all bad
so here’s to Neruda
and Philip Levine
and Merle Haggard
and Harvey Fite
who made a monument
for all time out of rocks
left behind by quarrymen
and who quoted
Kahlil Gibran
not himself a lover
of simple things: work
is love made visible
I enjoyed reading this all the way to the end. What style is this?
DeleteIt’s free verse (no stress or syllable count) with very short lines, generally only one or two stressed syllables per line. It’s the style that Pablo Neruda used in writing his Odas Elementales (Odes to Common Things). Neruda was Chilean, and a Communist, and wildly popular throughout Latin America. Odas Elementales was written in deliberately very simple language, so that it could be read and enjoyed by people of all levels of education. And the part about the right wing critic is true. This critic had always hated Neruda’s work, but he couldn’t hate the Odas Elementales. There’s a wonderful movie about the growing friendship between Neruda and a mailman, Il Postino.
DeleteHere’s Neruda’s Ode to his socks - https://poets.org/poem/ode-my-socks
DeleteAgreed, simple things are best! See my poem, below which I wrote before I read yours. TAsha
DeleteThis poem sure didn't go where it was supposed to...
ReplyDeleteI admire
those who walk forward
without dragging their past
with them like it
is present.
Sword in hand, they cut
through the vines that attempt
to entrap them,
move forward,
their sanity intact.
I carry my weapons
too awkwardly,
unsteady
in my gait. I lurch
sideways, fracturing things.
Those others don’t
have offspring.
Children are replete
with errors like mirrors
that I carry.
I watch them,
their freedom so light,
as I drag, drag, cargo,
slowly trudge full
speed ahead.
I was a bi puzzled by your poem, and found it to be quite mysterious, perhaps that is what you meant to do? I keep rereading it and I still find it puzzling. Do you mean children remind you o your errors? (sigh) well they are themselves, and we cannot be totally or even sometimes marginally at fault. They are here to dree their own weird after all. (Carry out their own fate).
DeleteI thought it came full circle, in a way. She admires those who move forward purposefully, letting nothing stand in her way. She can't do that. The third stanza is about not being able to do that, but she doesn't explain why -- instead she gives us an image, very visual, of her not doing it. What she does, how she goes through life, is important, not an explanation of why.
DeleteIn the fourth stanza, she starts to explain why - you can't go forward letting nothing stand in your way if you have children. But then comes the startling line, probably the part that you were puzzled by. Instead of explaining why having children won't let you go forward (and we don't need to have that explained to us -we all know why) she goes to another image.
This may be puzzling -- it is puzzling -- but it's exciting. It's good that she's not telling us what we already know -- or what she already knows. She's taking a chance - moving to an image because it feels right. The poem taking charge and going where it wasn't supposed to go.
So we have to stop and absorb this. Children are like mirrors -- we look at them and see ourselves reflected back. We look at their mistakes see that their mistakes, their bad judgment, the crazy stuff that kids do--that's ourselves reflected back.
Then the poem changes again. We may see these mistakes as a burden, but they don't. They are the people she admires, the ones who go forward boldly.
Probably they won't always be. They'll accumulate their own mirrors. They'll go from a natural state to a socially constricted state. You can cut through vines, but you can't cut through mirrors.
But not yet. She knows, like the woman in one of Victoria's most requested slam poems, what it's like to be young and free of baggage. She knows it doesn't last. But she can still celebrate it in the young.
I think it did. Always trust the poem to go where it thinks it's supposed to.
ReplyDeleteLove this!
ReplyDeleteIn Praise of Small Things
ReplyDeleteRainbows do not last
They emerge and fade
Small in time, great in beauty.
Violets and dandelions
Open, close, and transform
Awaiting the next spring.
Children soon grow up.
Their wonder at the world
diminishes as they age.
Pay attention to the small,
The brief, the ephemeral.
It comes with gifts.
Watch and learn to see
the sun sparkle in the drop
making a miniature rainbow.
Love this, especially the last stanza.
DeleteA different take on simple things. I like it.
DeleteSo beautiful and true!
ReplyDeleteWho Deserves Praise?
ReplyDeleteI praise the One who gave pneuma to me, in Breath!
With amazing new rhythms,
And insightful new prisms,
My soul moved out of schism.
Now each Breath revels, still knowing there’s one left... before death.
I praise the One who shaped my Faith!
In intriguing revelations,
And miraculous observations,
My thoughts molded by persuasion,
‘Til conception of Faith... shimmered like morning wraith.
I praise the One who formed me cognizant, Alive!
With marvelous and unanimous senses
That give perception ingenious guesses,
My maturing presence forever blesses
That I am Alive... though acknowledging both good and evil thrive.
I praise the One who designed water and rock into Planet!
For I am surrounded in beauty and serenity,
In compositions where I find identity,
And from here, I view star’s sparkling
infinity.
On this Planet, I have surety to find an answer... if only I ask it.
I praise the One who brings light to Truth!
And leads my pathways to trusted clearing,
And directs my storms with confident
steering,
Who heals my heartaches and dries my
tearing.
I cling to Truth and discover the greatest in me... still has freedom to choose.
I praise the One who, with a word, measures infinity with Time!
A relative entity and a fourth dimension,
Through which man progresses in forward
position,
But from which is measured both creation
and evolution.
My Time, in comparison, is infinitesimal... while eternity is sublime!
I praise the One who in death will Receive!
All who spent sensual life but kept alive
in spirit,
With clean heart, by faith now inherit,
A place in eternity, not by self-merit.
Simply I receive... gift from Creator-Savior-Rauch, because I believe.