My Poetry Sisters and I are working on writing poems in the style of another poet whose work we love. It's a fun challenge to take a serious look at the structure and elements of something lovely to try and figure out what makes it so. We chose to look at and work from Linda Hogan's poem "Innocence', found here at the Poetry Foundation.
After studying it and talking it over, we noticed the three stanzas focus on discovery, wonder, and growth. The lines of each stanza are 10, 6, and 4. It's a nice progression, don't you think?
I chose to stay with nature, and since I have a pink geranium in my office soaking up the sun, I went back to an experience I had visiting a cemetery and finding geraniums in the trash pile.
Hope
There is nothing more hopeful
than the cast-off geraniums
than the cast-off geraniums
tossed in the cemetery trash
whose dry roots hold on stubbornly
to the slimmest jolt
of living juice.
Could be the grounds keeper's job
is to keep things tidy by
solemnly sweeping up spent blooms.
Once I dragged out a partially green shoot
from the twisted, wilting pile and
surreptitiously stuck it in my jacket
as I was leaving a funeral,
wondering if one grief
carries over to another
or if one more chance
at life... any life at all
testifies to hope
enough to keep us going.
- Andromeda Jazmon
Take a look at the poems my Poetry Sisters have written: (Kelly and Laura are taking a break)
and then stop by the Friday Poetry roundup at Radio, Rhythm and Rhyme.
Enjoy!
