Poetry Challenge #303-Astonish Cocteau
A crusty loaf, bottle of wine and summertime—feels like France! And so, with no further ado, let’s tip our jaunty red berets to Jean Cocteau, born July 5, 1889. Bon Anniversaire!
If the name sounds familiar, it should. Jean Cocteau (pronounced Zahn Kaw-toh), poet, novelist, designer, dramatist, filmmaker, artist, and playwright “was among the best, most multi-talented artists of the 20th century.” -artnet
Cocteau started writing at the age of 10, and, by age 16, was already an established poet! At the age of 19, Cocteau published La Lampe d’Aladin, his premier compendium of poems. Quel Magnifique!
Regardless the medium/genre, Cocteau said all of his creations were essentially poetry.
The ballet, Parade, is Cocteau, written with composer Erik Satie, painter Pablo Picasso, choreographer Leonide Massine, and Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev of the Russian Ballet. The story goes that Cocteau and Diaghilev were walking down the street one day (sounds like a joke set up, right?) when Cocteau mustered up his courage to ask why the founder of Ballets Russes was so reserved in his comments on Cocteau’s work. As the story goes, Diaghilev adjusted his monocle and said: “Astonish me.”
From those 2 words “Astonish me”
Parade, considered the first modern ballet was born.
Poetry Challenge #302
Astonish Cocteau!
As Cocteau said, all his work was poetry, let’s use one of his drawings as inspiration for a poem. Write a poem inspired by one Cocteau’s drawing Cantate (above) or another—google Jean Cocteau’s art, it’s worth the trip.
Study the drawing for a bit and write a poem inspired by it. Is there something in the image—the form, the subject, a feeling—or the feeling it evokes in you—that’s astonishing?
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2600+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #302-No Messing Around
The first time I heard Lucille Clifton’s poem, “Homage to my Hips,” I thought she wrote it for me. It was bold, it was sassy, it was playful, and like the hips it honors, didn’t mess around.
Lucille Clifton, born June 27, 1936 is gone now (since 2010), but in her lifetime, and in her poetry, she didn’t mince words or spend time messing around with nonessentials.
Clifton was the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987) and Next: New Poems (1987), and from there the list of awards goes on and on. . .
When asked how she wanted to be remembered, Lucille Clifton said,
“I would like to be seen as a woman whose roots go back to Africa, who tried to honor being human.
My inclination is to try to help.”
“The first thing that strikes us about Lucille Clifton’s poetry is what is missing: capitalization, punctuation, long and plentiful lines. We see a poetry so pared down that its spaces take on substance, become a shaping presence as much as the words themselves.” -Christian Century review of Clifton’s work, Peggy Rosenthal
Poetry Challenge #302
NO MESSING AROUND!
Many reviews of Clifton’s poetry make note of her lean style and “physically small” poems. “Poetics of understatement,” Robin Becker called it in the American Poetry Review “—no capitalization, few strong stresses per line, many poems totaling fewer than twenty lines, the sharp rhetorical question.”
For today’s prompt, write a poem in which you try to “honor being human” the way Clifton herself might have written it.
Keep it short, tight, honest, stripped down, unapologetically lower case—no messing around.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2600+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments (below the giveaway notice).
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
What Inspires Me? The Babe Going Out With a BAAAAAAAM!
On May 25, 1935, at Forbes Field, Babe Ruth didn’t hit one home run—he hit three!
For more Baseball & Babe, check out my book! Click! Even if you love the Mets or Sox…even if you hate the Yankees…you’ll LOVE it—it’s baseball history!
He belted the first one into the lower deck.
The second homer landed in the upper deck.
The third blasted clear out of the ballpark.
Ruth went four for four that game, hitting three home runs and driving in six runs.
As the Boston Globe put it, “Babe Ruth’s final home run was a moonshot!”
“Twice he cleared the playing field with home runs which have been made in the same manner by ordinary sluggers. The third time, in the seventh inning, he caught hold of one of Guy Bush’s slow curves, and with one mighty swipe sent it clear out of the ballpark 50 feet over the right field stands, the first time the ball had ever been knocked out of the park in that particular spot.”
Back to the game: The game was a history maker for The Babe, but not for The Braves. The Pirates won 11-7.
Five days later, on May 30, 1935, Babe Ruth played his final Major League Baseball game.
Babe Ruth retired with a career record of 714 home runs, 2,213 RBI, 2,062 walks and a lifetime .342 average. His pitching record in 10 seasons was 94-46, with 107 complete games.
Fin Pal Ask Norman "How's this?"
Ready to read Norman’s answer? Scroll down . . .
Glug
Glug
Glug . . .
But first a finny:
Q: Where do kingfish and queenfish live?
Q: Where do kingfish and queenfish live?
A: In sandcastles!
Do you have a question for Norman the Goldfish- about friends, school, pets, family, life in and outside the fishbowl? Send him a letter!
Don’t forget to order your copy of NOT NORMAN: A GOLDFISH STORY and NORMAN: ONE AMAZING GOLDFISH!!
Poetry Challenge #301-U-Turn
Confession Time: I can get lost in my own home—and do! I’ll be on my way to do something, something very intentional—maybe even important—and right in the middle of the going I’ll forget what I was fetching.
Or, even with the not-so helpful help of Google Map telling me to “Head North” or “Head South” I’ll have to proceed until it tells me to “make the first legal u-turn” or not to find out for sure which direction I should be heading.
And other times, like yesterday—or earlier when I had to turn back to where I’d come from and begin again before it dawned on me where I had been going, what I had been doing in the first place.
That’s what this is. U-Turn!…beep-beep-beep backing up!. . . . Change that to You-Turn!
Poetry Challenge #301
You-Turn!
Turn back to the poems you’ve already written.
Find two (or three) that have the same or similar topics.
Read through them and mark your favorite words, phrases, or images.
Now try to combine the poems into one. You can add and take away words as needed.
Watch for sound, incidental rhyme, and strong feelings!
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Revise It!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2600+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #300-Rap-A-Rapa-Rap
Rap gets a bad rap. We, oldsters, now, ourselves raised on rock-n-roll, listen with our ears craning to pick out harsh sounds, harsh images, “nasty” words the same way our grandparents (parents?) listened to Chuck, Elvis and the Beatles—heads poised to shake, tongues already tsking. What they didn’t know—and so many of us seem to have forgotten—words, music, poetry is a way to express feelings-get them out. The first step to healing.
No one illustrates the healing power of words than Rapper—"embodiment of gansta-rap aesthecitc” –and actor, Tupak Shakur RIP. He was gunned down in Las Vegas and died on Sept. 13, 1996. His murder was never solved.
Tupak Shakur was born June 16, 1971, in Harlem, to Afeni Tupak, a single, struggling, mother of two. The family moved often, in and out of shelters, finally, fortuitously, for Tupak, to Baltimore. That move may well have made all the difference.
Recognized, immediately for his intelligence and personability, Tupak attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, where biographer Robert Sam Anison noted in a 1997 Vanity Fair feature, Tupac felt "the freest I ever felt” …where, Tupac discovered the power and release and comfort of words. By seventeen, when he was already “obsessively” writing poetry and listening to Hip-Hop.
Below is Tupak’s poem “The Rose That Grew from Concrete” and here’s an analysis from Poet & Poem: CLICK!
With his music, his words, Tupak expressed the frustration, anger, pain so many others felt, and are still feeling. To date he’s sold over 75 million albums, making him one of the top-selling artists of all time.
If you’d like to read the lyrics to Dear Mama as you listen: CLICK!
The “main-stream” public found the power and rawness of Tupak’s music frightening and tuned out before listening (me included, until a friend’s son Xan shamed me into listening.) Tupac often complained that he was misunderstood—Sound familiar Elvis? John?
"Everything in life is not all beautiful. There is lots of killing and drugs. To me a perfect album talks about the hard stuff and the fun and caring stuff. ... The thing that bothers me is that it seems like a lot of the sensitive stuff I write just goes unnoticed."-2Pak
Poetry Challenge #300
Rap-A-Rappa-Rap
For today’s prompt let’s put aside any pre-conceived notions about Hip-Hop and Rap and try to write it.
Rap, also called Hip-Hop (which also includes the culture), by definition is a “musical style in which rhythmic and/or rhyming speech is chanted (“rapped”) to musical accompaniment.”
Which comes first, the rhythm or the words? That’s up to the creator. Some Rap is created by fitting words to an established rhythm. Others create rap by first writing a poem, then reread it and listen for a natural rhythm. Either way, once the rhythm is set, revise by changing, moving, rearranging words to make the rhythm strong and repeatable.
As Tupak did with his writing, challenge yourself to write about “the hard stuff and the fun and the caring stuff” in your rap.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Rap it!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2600+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
Poetry Challenge #299-Dream On Nikki!
As soon as I began reading about our June 7th birthday poet dream songs swirled: Dreamer, Daydream Believer, Beautiful Dreamer. . . the Everly Brother’s crooning Dream-Dream-Dream…
Nikki Giovanni is all about dreams. Nikki was sickly child which made her, in her words, “Lucky!”
Lucky because she was always sniffling.” Why?
Because she writes in her website bio, she could stay home and read the books she wanted to read. And her family’s library was extensive and inclusive—no subjects were deemed too big, complex or taboo.
Nikki Giovanni has written many books of poetry, biographies and numerous children’s books including my favorite:
I Am Loved!
Poems with the late Ashley Bryan’s glorious art!
When Nikki became a mother, she moved into writing for children.
Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943, and grew up spending the school year in Cincinnati and summers back in Knoxville. She’s on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor.
Her first poetry collections were published in 1968, and the list of awards Nikki Giovanni has received since reads like a novel. Perhaps because she is a committed explorer:
“My dream was not to publish or to even be a writer: my dream was to discover something no one else had thought of. I guess that’s why I’m a poet.”
Poetry Challenge #299
Dream ON!
Many of Nikki Giovanni’s poems deal with family and life. Read “Her Dreams” “Bay Leaves” and/or “The Longest Way Round” (above & below).
Think of a moment in your life and write a poem about it.
Play with the words until you get exactly the right ones.
Try having only one word on a line once or twice in your poem.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, Write It!
Here are the links to the poems referenced here via Poetry Foundation, so you can read them in their entirety and/or read more of this beautiful dreamers work! (you’ll need to cut and paste them into your browser.)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159788/her-dreams
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159787/bay-leaves
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159790/the-longestway-
round
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge 2400+ days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl):
All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
What Inspires Me? Goldfish Rescuer
We all need another hero!
Channeling Tina Turner (my personal superhero) today, singing in her rockin’-stompin’ heels with one small but mighty change.
Change “don’t” to “all” in the Thunderdome Theme on behalf of unwanted, forgotten, deserted goldfish and friends everywhere.
We All Need Another Hero!—sing it Tina!
Writing stories about Norman, One Amazing Goldfish gives me great joy, but also comes tinged with great responsibility, especially when I hear people say those four dreaded words uttered in the same sentence as the word “goldfish” or “fish” or frankly anything other than bodily waste and TP.
“Flushed down the toilet…”
Hello Brenda Prohaska, beautician, cancer survivor, and fish rescuer!
I first read of Brenda’s fish rescue efforts in a NY Times article about how she sprang into action on behalf of 300 goldfish that had somehow washed into a basement during Hurricane Sandy.
Brenda took up fish rescuing about three years ago, after learning of the 300 trapped goldfish and quickly became NYC’s official fish help hotline—a weighty, exhausting and expensive task. Like all superheroes, she needed a trusty sidekick. Lucky for her—and stranded fish—as the NY Times article put it, in 2020 a disabled construction worker, Laboy Wiggins, “rescued the fish rescuer.”
Reasons fish need rescuing are “varied as fish in the sea: a messy divorce in which a restraining order prevented a spouse from collecting his fahaka pufferfish; a man moving to California stopped by Transportation Security Administration agents at the airport for trying to take his suckermouth catfish in his carry-on bag.”
Not to mention the “won it at the fair but it didn’t die” tough-luck goldfish variety.
Laboy set up and maintains their facebook page: NYC Fish Rescue.
And they are in the process (perhaps have) established a non-profit Fish Rescue group.
And here’s the link to their Fish Rescue Go Fund Me Campaign:
Brenda’s fish-ambulance is a repurposed hearse.
NYC Fish Rescue isn’t the only ditched, deserted, abandoned hope for fish either. There and group in other places—google it!
Now that’s inspiring!
For more about Brenda, Laboy, NYC Fish Rescue, here’s the NY Times Article, “When Helpless Fish Need a Hero”