Tag: Writing

Tourista Losta?

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 2 Comments

I think write, therefore I am.
I read, therefore I write.
I read more, therefore I write more.

Reading some interesting and amusing senryu at The Haiku Foundation this morning has sent my thoughts shooting off into space. Then back to Earth they came and landed on some foreign shore. Maybe not the best senryu, but I hope it gives you a chuckle.

on far flung planets
aliens all speak English
tourista losta mista?

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BENVENUTO / BIENVENUE / WILLKOMMEN / KONNICHIWA, etc.

I’d like to give a warm welcome to Tree Top Haiku subscribers who are visiting or following this site now. Yesterday I had a WordPress helper beam Tree Top Haiku’s URL over to this site. At this moment I can’t seem to keep up with two blogs, so will be posting more haiku here.

Another bit of news: We saw our first robins Thursday morning!

An Old Poem

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 7 Comments

In honour of National Poetry Month, I’m posting this verse from a Canadian writer of long ago. Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote the Anne series, starting with Anne of Green Gables, turned her hand to poetry as well.

The Garden in Winter
by L.M. Montgomery

Frosty-white and cold it lies
Underneath the fretful skies;
Snowflakes flutter where the red
Banners of the poppies spread,
And the drifts are wide and deep
Where the lilies fell asleep.

But the sunsets o’er it throw
Flame-like splendor, lucent glow,
And the moonshine makes it gleam
Like a wonderland of dream,
And the sharp winds all the day
Pipe and whistle shrilly gay.

Safe beneath the snowdrifts lie
Rainbow buds of by-and-by;
In the long, sweet days of spring
Music of bluebells shall ring,
And its faintly golden cup
Many a primrose will hold up.

Though the winds are keen and chill
Roses’ hearts are beating still,
And the garden tranquilly
Dreams of happy hours to be―
In the summer days of blue
All its dreamings will come true.

Woe in the Green Woods

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 6 Comments

Since this is National Poetry Month, I dared to hop over to Judy D-B’s blog and issue her a challenge — based on her own suggestion, mind you — to write a poem using at least three of the following words:
chlorophyll, fettuccine, rosemary, poison ivy, parakeet, and Greenland.

I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist — and she hasn’t. You can read her verse here: Green Cuisine. Now I invite any other readers to wander the green woods with us and write a poem using at least three of those words. You can give the title and leave a link to your poem in the comments below.

Once I had these words in front of my eyes, my own thoughts started to whirl in a kaleidoscope of green chips and I composed a poem as well. Unlike Judy, I didn’t succeed in using all the words.

One day a poison ivy patch
attracted little sister;
before too long she started to scratch
and itch turned into blister.

Our mom was crushing rosemary
planning a meatloaf lunch
with fettuccine on the side,
when in trooped our sad bunch.

Mom boiled up some chamomile
to make a soothing potion,
sent brother to Greenland’s drug store
for a jug of calamine lotion.

And all the while my sister wailed
our parakeet kept repeating,
Our grandma’s, “Count your blessings now.
The joys of life are fleeting.”

The Windows of Poetry

~ Christine Goodnough ~ Leave a comment

April is National Poetry Month and the League of Canadian Poets has adopted the theme, Celebrate nature with poetry. Which suits me just fine: I like to write about nature.

Imagine yourself walking down a long hall with a good friend. In this hallway there are a number of small windows, and as you pass each one, your friend points out some particular scene just outside that window. Something is happening out there that they want you to notice.

Like a painting, a good poem is a window on some scene in life and a book of poetry is like a line of windows. At each one you stop as your poet friend draws your attention to some detail outside. Some writers will make more comment what they’re pointing out, some less.

Poets of long ago gave readers the whole story and their take on what they are seeing. For example, Robert Burns’ To A Louse, is an eight-verse poem about a louse he saw crawling on a fine lady’s hat in church. Seven are saying, “This is what I see”:
Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn’d by saunt an sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her—
Sae fine a lady!
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

And then the punch line, now famous around the world:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea’es us,
An ev’n devotion!

These words have resonated with readers of all ages, since we’ve all seen people with foolish notions of their own importance and wish they could see just how their behavior looks to us. Sometimes, on reading these lines, we may shake our heads as we think of situations in the past when we acted like a know-it-all, a snob or an airhead. We see it clearly now, and surely everyone around us saw back then how silly, selfish, or defensive our attitude was. It’s amazing, when we’re trying our best to put on a persona, how much of our real self sticks out.

In our day, poets tend to rather describe what they are seeing and let you draw your own conclusions. I appreciate both kinds of verses, the one that evokes a feeling as well as the one that delivers an understanding — actually a good poem should do both. I have a harder time appreciating verses where I haven’t a clue what the writer is trying to say. No matter what size or style, give me an accessible poem any day.

For National Poetry Month I’m going to try to post a verse a day, plus get my book of haiku & senryu published. I HAD it all prepared, but glitches arose… Today I’m going back to “Self-Pub U” and hope to learn how to insert images properly. Sigh…

Life is learning, and I have lots more to do. 😉