This was written for dVerse’s Monday quadrille challenge, with the requirement of using the word “juke.” A quadrille is a poem having just 44 words. “Terpsichorean” is a great word, but it was also thrown in there in desperation to get exactly 44 words to fit my form. 😛
Leonardo da Vinci, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This was written for Linda Kruschke’s Paint Chip Poetry challenge, where we were challenged to write an ubi sunt poem featuring three of the paint chip words. A few of these words like “octopus” were a bit strange this time, but the words “illumination” and “graphite” immediately struck me as having artistic applications. I thought I could work “peachy” in there too.
Below is a paragraph taken from Linda’s page, which she took from John Drury’s poetry dictionary on the ubi sunt poetry form.
UBI SUNT (uh’-suhnt’, “uh” pronounced as in “put”; Latin, “where are”) Poetic theme in which the poet asks “where are” certain people, where have they gone. The theme began in Medieval Latin, with the formula ubi sunt used to introduce a roll call of the dead or missing and to suggest how transitory life is.
The best-known ubi sunt poem [is] François Villon’s ballade whose refrain is “But where are the snows of yester-year?”
I’m sharing this with dVerse’s Open Link Night. I was looking through my picture files for poetry inspiration and found this copy of artwork by Lisa Finch. I just love it for several reasons. Many of you know that I have an animal care business, so that was one reason. I love the glamour of the female character here, the fact that she has fallen asleep with an open book and the title of the artwork which is also “The Dreamers,” which seemed to speak of imagination and creativity.
Lisa Finch has an Etsy shop where she sells some of her work on canvas and also prints and note cards. I perused it and found so many more pieces that I enjoy. Animals seem to be a common theme, not just pets but wild and exotic animals as well. Many of her pieces seem to have a sort of female Dr. Doolittle character. She has some fantasy and almost surrealistic scenes with some old Hollywood glamour combined in there. I almost feel I should revisit for an art-themed post.
This was written for dVerse’s Poetics prompt in which we were asked to pick one of several Ernest Hemingway quotes for inspiration. I chose this one, “It is very hard to write this way, beginning things backward…” from The Torrents of Spring (1926.) I’m pretty sure though that Hemingway wouldn’t appreciate being the muse for this one, but perhaps Shel Silverstein or P.G. Wodehouse would nod their approval. A while ago, I saw a prompt to write a story backwards on Reedsy. I didn’t act on it then, but I had the thought to start out with chaos and then rewind to some explanation of it. Of course, I decided to start out with comical chaos.