Word Garden Word List--Anna Karenina

 

Hello my little Russian dolls! This week our source is Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina." I read it some years ago and despite the long tangents into agrarian issues of the 19th century, it remains one of the most memorable novels that I have ever read. If only Tolstoy, Hugo, and Dickens would have had Max Perkins for an editor! 

Max Perkins

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, avoid railroads, and wear a big hat with feathers in splendorous style. This List remains active through next Saturday.

Note: It won't come as news that poetry blogging is on life support, if not death watch. This blog will always be here and will always feature every new poem that I write. However, I am done doing prompts, and don't think I will continue the List anymore after this week. I appreciate everyone who has participated and who has had kind words to say about my efforts in assembling it for you each week. My poetic energy is now focused HERE. You can find my personal page HERE.  

And now, your List:

betrayal 

clasp

collapse

drift

echo

exile

frost

habit

hunger

hush

icon

lantern

longing

orchard

railway

steam

threshold

varnish

velvet

whisper

Philomela of the Bungalows

 

I feel forsaken

like a rolled newspaper in the rain.

Is that You? in the window box?

Is that You? magnificent in a woken engine?

I don't mean to be sullen,

a crushed flower with a brave yellow bloom--

I'm a vine growing in through the window

of your abandoned holy room.

Oh honey. My fingers flat upon

your smooth chest made of smoke,

I am rain falling ever further from her cloud.

Call me back---use your voice of spade-shaped leaves.

I will come, across the lawns and waters

to kneel at your feet

and sing.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--D.H.Lawrence

Music: John Waite "Missing You"

Word Garden Word List--D.H Lawrence

 

D.H.Lawrence

Hello my little Listies, and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! When I was a young adult, I read D.H.Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover" and was absolutely blown away by it. (I mentioned this when we had Alison MacLeod's "Tenderness" as our source not long ago.) Now I am re-reading it but am not finished with it yet, so I culled this week's List from two short stories by Lawrence: "The Prussian Officer" and "Odour of Chrysanthemums." 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then settle down on the verandah with a volume of Lawrence! 

And now, your List!

apron

ashes

bruises

cinder

clutched

forsaken

march

engine

orderly

primroses

pulse

shadow

smoke

spasms

stagnant

sullen

tremor

vine

whistle 

winding

Casa Tiger

 

Every movie can be improved by adding a hungry tiger into it--

a bullet-proof tiger who can talk, but

only speaks in aphorisms and maxims.

The tiger's voice should sound like broad green leaves 

and love language.

High Noon with Gary Cooper, bad guys, and a bullet-proof tiger.

Citizen Kane with a talking tiger on a sled.

Casablanca with a tiger behind the bar, saying,

"Love is like the stripes of a zebra; 

bright and dark touching but still apart and always moving."

Real life could be enhanced as well. 

The tiger could eat people who don't allow their dogs upstairs,

who cut in line, and who take duckface selfies.

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away!"

the tiger would say while standing over their bones,

full with both flesh and satisfaction.

You could come over.

We can watch movies--with tigers in them!--

spouting maxims and bromides,

wrestling feverishly with each other and with the notion

of tigers knowing anything about zebras or hearts

except that they are foolish things

made of meat

and consumable.

____

for Shay's Word Garden Word List--Incidents Around the House

Word Garden Word List--Incidents Around the House

 

Hello my little alternate versions! I spent the previous two days whipping through Incidents Around the House  by Josh Malerman. Malerman is the author of a number of books, including Bird Box.  My feverish two-day page flipping extravaganza speaks either to my slothful indolence or the masterful job Malerman did on this fantastic horror novel.

Josh Malerman

Incidents  is told by an eight year old girl named Bela. In her closet there is a creature called "Other Mommy." Other Mommy asks if Bela will let her into her heart. Otherwise, she might become mean. Dear reader, I would advise taking her at her word!  For me, this novel ranks right up there with The Exorcist, The Shining, The Amityville Horror and Ghost Eaters. If a continuous sense of dread interrupted at intervals by sheer chaotic terror is your cup of tea, then this is your book!

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then check your bedroom closet to make sure there isn't an incredibly creepy thing  hiding inside. This prompt remains active through next Saturday.

And now, your List:

carnations

closet

creaking

dancing

dogs

fur

heart

innocence

lamp

movie

neighbor

nerve

pretended

sleep

smell

tiger

trying

upstairs

voice

wind

Third Marriage, Seaside.

 

Go down to the greenhouse and gather the blooms,

then scatter them all in separate rooms--

the rose on the grate of the fireplace cold

to lie there and die there as we grow old.

The arrangements are odd and enigmatic,

the occupants frail and most asthmatic

afflicted with allergies, fear and despair

made worse by the stale and fetid air.

Though we gasp our devotion like fish in a boat

and confess our passion by rite and rote,

we're as blinkered as babes, as clear as bells

as we rise from the drink on our half-assed shells.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--First Love

Word Garden Word List--First Love

 

Hello my lovestruck lovelies, and welcome to this week's edition of The Word List! Long ago when I was not yet the crumbling ruin you see before you today, I found a copy of FOUR GREAT RUSSIAN SHORT NOVELS  in a used bookstore, and that little paperback has traveled with me through the decades ever since. The four stories are: Turgenev "First Love", Dostoyevsky "The Gambler", Tolstoy "Master & Man", and Chekhov "The Duel." It is the first one that concerns us here today.

My copy looks like this.

"First Love" hit me right in the heart when I first read it, and I have re-read it twice since then, but not recently. These days, "The Gambler" and especially "The Duel" hit closer to home, but in my young years it was "First Love" all the way. 

A wild and crazy guy.

Turgenev is known for the novel "Fathers and Sons" and the play "A Month in the Country." Our story for the List was published in 1860.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then become fascinated with someone charming. This prompt remains active through next Saturday.

And now, your List:

amazing

bell

brickwork

confess

crowds

darkness

describe

enigmatic

fear

fence

fits

garden

greenhouse

honey

intensely

joyful

pale

queen

simply

teeth

Two Sharks

 

I have two sharks inside me

swimming in tandem and holding my heart

between them like a little family 

walking in the dark.

I send them gulps of air from outside

as if I were some sort of oxygenated charity

with a face and feet, operating in the world

on their behalf like a proxy or prosthetic.

Oh fishies, confined and angry in the bowl of my ribs,

here come those old blues again.

Why does life go on so long, demand so much,

slowly dribbling out the cracked glass of years?

I have had ideas all along, fine ideas

to open a ministry in a dumpster,

a ballroom in an attic, a cemetery 

on a space station with the whole Earth for Ouija board.

I'm scared, fishies. Will the moon call you

and will you answer her tidal madrigal?

Will she require three voices, you and my heart?

Will you rise in glory, leaving me hollow, in salt and sorrow?

_________________

for Word Garden Word List--How To Sell a Haunted House

Word Garden Word List--How To Sell a Haunted House

 

Hello my little puppeteers and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! I recently finished a novel by Grady Hendrix entitled How To Sell a Haunted House, and I loved it.

It's about a brother and sister whose parents have both died in a traffic accident, leaving them to sell the family home. The trouble is, there's a haunted puppet named Pupkin in there. He's very charming unless he's turning you into his zombie slave or trying to kill you. Trouble is, he's almost always trying to do either or both. 

Grady Hendrix

The novel is half family dynamics and half horror, with a liberal dash of humor as well. I can't stop thinking about it. Hmm, could it be Pupkin taking over my mind???

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then be sure that new house of yours is really, actually vacant before you move in! This prompt remains active through next Saturday.

And now, your List:

attic

bright

clown

cousins

dolls

dumpster

friends

hammer

haunted

jealous

jumbled

ministry

moon

puppet

remote

safe

scared

snotty

squirrels

thirsty

Love Song For Donny

 He calls himself a cheerer upper

that drooling simp,

that cretinous, sludge-blooded

syphilitic pimp.

"Come on get happy

and make it snappy

or just shovel shit

if your hair is nappy."

We've had enough

of fatty with the golf cart

with the cabinet he got

on sale at Walmart.

The baby in chief

is just illusion super sized

whose stupid cryto coin

has 'em all hypnotized.

He's filling his diaper

at his ghost town parade

afraid that we're hip to

his strongman charade.

He's a crying, crapping, superannuated fake

with his spineless, goggle-eyed, parroting rummies

who will blow themselves up like fingerless rubes--

his red-hatted cosplay crash test dummies.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In the Rye

Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In The Rye

 

Hello my little outsiders, and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! This week we have a source novel that needs no introduction--The Catcher In the Rye  by J.D.Salinger.

I first read it in high school. My best friend had to read it for class and it sounded interesting. Now, at that point in my life, I was reading less than I ever had before or ever would again, but I read this novel and loved it. I loved Holden tap dancing on the floor of the dorm bathroom, crowing, "I'm the goddamn governor's son!" I thought it was tremendously funny and also poignant.

I read it again when I was around forty, married, and raising a son. This time, it made me want to help Holden in all of his confusion and hurt. I wanted to mother him. I had been where he was once, and hadn't forgotten. I read the book a third time last year, and once again it hit me differently than the first two times. I kept thinking of the song Ripple  by the Grateful Dead.

There is a road, no simple highway

between the dawn and the dark of night

and if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own, Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then make your wandering way back home. This prompt remains active until next Sunday.

And now, your List:

aspirin

bores

celebrity

cheerer upper

clock

corny

drooling

entertaining

glued

incognito

limping

madman

museum

nervous

record

school

sleepy

snappy

terrific

wuddyacallit

Travel Advisory

 

In Denver, poems stay up in the Rockies at night

only rolling down Colfax Avenue in bright afternoon,

hanging out in the vanished record store with

Allen Ginsburg, waiting for night to howl at the moon.

In Toronto, you can catch a touristy rickshaw

or hustle some change at night on Yonge street

depending where on the grayscale you fall,

and the poems there wear boots and are desperate/sweet.

In Manila you can take your poem to a fine hotel

or share Italian in a restaurant where they let you write on the wall,

then get starry/holy at one of the cathedrals

and set out before dawn to hunt up some warm pan de sal.

But in London there are no poems, they've all

fallen into the gap, been run over by trains,

gotten rat-tired of curry and black-coat robots.

Nerves fried, orphan-empty, they sick in the streets, 

cut out their tongues, and die whenever it rains.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

Music: Leo Kottke Eight Miles High

Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

 

Hello my little travelers across space and reality, and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List. This time our source is Allen Ginsberg's Iron Horse. The poem is part of his The Fall of America: Poems of These States sequence of poems, and uses the locomotive as a symbol for the destructive nature of modern society and the loss of individuality.

Allen Ginsberg

My copy was published in 1973 by Coach House Press of Toronto, Canada, but I bought it on a swing through California at about that time. In 1992 I met the author and he signed my copies of Howl  and Iron Horse. He asked me where I had gotten the latter and then went through it and corrected three mistakes with the same pen he had used to sign my book. He knew exactly where they were. I still have both of the collections he signed.  In fat, I still have every poetry collection I ever bought, that meant something to me, and I bought a lot of them when I was young. Not much has survived with me through all the years, but my poetry books have. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then travel by train across America. 

And now, your List:

actors

baton

bulletins

busted

electronic

empty

hamburgers

leafy

nap

nerves

orphan

phantom

poem

public

robots

slag

stale

starry

train

voice

Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton

 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List poetry prompt. I'm a day early with it since I didn't post one last week. Our source this time is Anne Sexton's collection entitled To Bedlam and Part Way Back. 

Anne Sexton

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. This prompt remains active through next Saturday. 

Your List:

animals

begat

calling

carvings

cures

elephants

erasers

hotel

jackpot

madness

mine

noon

poets

postmarks

radio

roller coaster

rowboat

silk

spoons

wooden

My Child

 

My child was born over the radio at noon

calling, crying, appearing--clearly mine.

She displayed an instant madness, an affinity for the moon

accepting only pomegranate and warm plum wine

as Nurse counted up the medications and the spoons.

We communicate by carvings, deep and raw

and love words mercurial and gritty as a dune,

that respect no wound, no custom, no law.

My elephant child, heavy, hunted, wise

eludes rubber-handed teachers of the exhausted strike

arriving in little rowboats in full courtly disguise

to mine my little darling as she rides her phantasmal bike

down to the grave of stars to kiss the thing that dies

in a tiny wooden cradle beneath a concrete sun

to bring it back, to make it rise

and then her work is done.

Come, child of animals, black earth and fire

to the shelter I have cobbled from discarded turtle shells

where poets burn on pages, porches, pyres

and all variety of heavens, limbos, hells

to arrange your dolls named Judgement and Desire

who sit on silken pillows or in coffins fit with bells

to call their mothers, those beauties, belles and hags

combined into an advocate for my child with tongue flat-felled

by a celebrated seamstress, dumbly mute and dressed in rags.

_____

for Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton

Music:

Sin City 

Word Garden Word List--Bittersweet

 

Hello my little holiday weekend warriors! You may be suffering from too much potato salad or the aftereffects of that spiked lemonade, but I know what real  suffering is. I have just hate-read to the bitter end of Michael Ondaatje's overwritten, torpid, preachy, over-ornamented, meandering, disjointed mess entitled The English Patient. Now, I usually cull your weekly List from something I have recently read, but that turkey is snug in the bin and is not ever seeing the light of day again and soooo... I have decided to feature and old favorite, Nevada Barr's Bittersweet. 

Nevada Barr is known for her mystery/thrillers set in various national parks and those are fine reads, but Bittersweet is a love story between two women in the old west. I love it and thank my BFF for gifting it to me. 

Nevada Barr

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then sit back and read something more like Bittersweet, and less like The English Patient. (I did love the movie, though.) This prompt remains active through next Saturday.

And now, your List!

autumn

basket

bible

birds

candy

crush

doctor

dreams

frizzy

glasses

honey

kitten

mail

moon

onions

shyness

soft

stars

texts

watercolor

Greenhouse Afternoon

 

There should be a bible for things like this--

something dependable

something I could grab onto

when I feel bewildered,

   dizzy,

from your smile and your scent

when you stand closer

   than I expect.

Such a bible would have shed its

shall-nots

in favor of

more love-thy-neighbor

   especially

when the sky is full of soft stars

and you remove my glasses

   along with my reserve.

This bible would be full of watercolors

and nested in by drowsy birds.

This bible would be

   lit like a greenhouse afternoon

or suggested in midnight indigo.

Lay hands on my shyness

   and let me lay my burden down--

turn me to the text of oh-gosh-yes

   like a prodigal

whose lips can finally confess.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Bittersweet.

Music: Denise King Say You Say me