Poetry Friday: January 12, 2024
Tracey at Tangles & Tails is hosting this week. Hop on over there for the roundup. Tracey and I met last year at Highlights during Irene Latham and Charles Waters’ poetry workshop. I’m so glad she’s a regular part of the Poetry Friday community!
Sneak Peek from Sylvia
In case you missed it, Sylvia Vardell posted the yearly Sneak Peek of Poetry books for 2024. I look forward to this list every year!
Haiku of the Week
winter garden
grays and crisps in lesser light
rustle of stories
Haiku & Photo © 2023 Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Photo Taken: December 21, 2023 at Green Spring Gardens
Haiku Written: December 28, 2023
Poem as Picture Book
by Adriana Hernández Bergstrom
Orchard Books, 2023
This is a 40-word book that is a short rhyming poem about a tumbleweed tumbling across the desert. It’s laid out mostly one line per spread.
Poetry Connections
- Use of space (line, word)
- Rhyming
- Couplets
- Alliteration
- Assonance
- Narrative
- Science connections to the flora and fauna in the desert (back matter)
Links
Grow
My word of the year is GROW. This month, I’ve been stretching myself a bit by revising and sending in poems for the Poetry Society of Virginia contests. Regardless of the outcome, it’s been a good exercise in revisiting old poems and reinvisioning them.
22 Comments
Tracey Kiff-Judson
I love “rustle of stories!” Beautiful haiku and photo, Marcie. Thank you for sharing the Vardell Sneak Peak! I had missed that last week. I am going to get my hands on Tumble ASAP! : )
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
I hope you’ll enjoy Tumble! And Sylvia’s list is full of books that will keep us reading all of 2024! 🙂
Rose Cappelli
Such beauty in your photo and words, Marcie! Thank you.
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Thank you, Rose!
Linda Baie
The new the other night showed many tumbleweeds from the terrible wind crossing the mid-west. The book you’ve shared looks fun! Thanks for your ‘rustle of stories’, too, Marcie!
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Thank you, Linda!
PATRICIA J FRANZ
Are the brown blooms in your photo in your yard somewhere or did you find these on a walk? They look like they could’ve been beautiful dry-flower stems! I loved TUMBLE, too.
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
They are beautiful. They are from Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, VA. I would have loved to clip a bouquet of them, but I can’t, since it’s a beautifully curated public space.
Laura Purdie Salas
Marcie, Hooray for sending in poems! I wish I did that more. I love your rustle of stories!
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
I have not been very diligent about this in the past. I have tried to make use of some of the contests I read about. Even if nothing else happens as a result, it has forced me to revise some poems.
Molly Hogan
I find the winter garden, full of leftovers from summer, endlessly fascinating. I never cut down the stalks until spring (though I’ve read pros and cons about this) and enjoy their ever-changing architecture. Your photo is just gorgeous and your poem is the perfect accompaniment. Hurray for submitting and thanks for the introduction to “Tumble.”
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
I was talking to a colleague about this. She chops down stuff in late summer because she thinks it’s unsightly, and I’m like “noooo, what about the birds? What will they eat in the winter?” Plus I find the winter garden sort of fascinating.
Linda Mitchell
I’m so glad that you are sending poems in to PSV. I am not this year. I will again someday. I love the categories and the winning poems are always so good! Those rustling stories…ooooh, they are calling to me.
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Yes, if nothing else, it forced me to revise some poems and consider different categories.
Mary Lee
Tumbleweeds also rustle with story. Where I grew up, they would pile up along fencerows and treelines, burying them after they had bounced with the dust across pastures, feedlots, and I-70.
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Amazing! Definitely not something I’ve seen.
Susan T.
Marcie, that’s a great evocation of a winter garden, and looking out at ours, I see that it is in dire need of a haircut. Oof. Thanks for the link to Sylvia’s list; I haven’t seen it. And “Tumble” looks like it would go great with Carter Goodrich’s “Nobody Hugs a Cactus,” in which one of the main characters is a tumbleweed.
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Yes, I’m sure those two books would make a good pairing.
Karen Edmisten
“rustle of stories” … LOVE!
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Thank you, Karen!
Carol Varsalona
Marcie Friday’s photo/poem is as beautiful as always. I agree that “rustle of stories” is a lovely ending. I wonder if the garden flowers are now talking about the new fallen snow here in Northern Virginia. Have a wonderful time shooting photos of the January snow.
Marcie Flinchum Atkins
Yes, I took some photos of some other winter flowers in the snow this week.