Wednesday Muse - Summer Rain

Hello Wednesday Musers!  Let's get wet.  Summer rain runs the gamut from light brief showers to pouring down deluge to long soft rains.

I would like for you all to write a poem about summer rain. It it is the welcome rain after a long drought, the brief shower that occurs while the sun is shining or the sudden kablam! of a sudden rain that occurs out of the blue.

Let's also read the poems of people we have not commented on before. Let us be the welcome rain after a drought of comments.

Get out your umbrellas! Let's write!

Sunday Muse # 66

"One Day I'll Fly Away"  Photography by Hayley Roberts

Image Source

Today it is Carrie bringing you a photo for your musing pleasure.  As always, link, visit others, and have fun everyone!

Wednesday Muse: Night Sounds

Hi musers; It is the time of the year when all of nature is wide awake and telling us humans about it it.  In the summer, the whole night puts forth its symphony.

Crickets, cicadas, owls, bats, frogs, toads, deer, roaming domestic and feral animals - they all make sounds.  Their naturals body sounds, sounds of the animals moving through grasses and bushes, sounds of birds at night - they all unite their voices.

Write me a poem about the night sounds you hear.  Incorporate some of the smells too if you like.  I like sitting on my back porch and listening to the small tree frogs open their mouths and make their deep bwaaaamp, bwaaamp! when they sense moisture in the air - the coming of rain.  My next favorite sound is the sound of cicadas with their rattling and sawing sounds.  To me it is THE sound of summer.

Here is a poem about cicadas:

Cicadas At The End of Summer

by Martin Walls

Whine as though a pine tree is bowing a broken violin,

As though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of

titanium;

They chime like freight wheels on a Norfolk Southern

slowing into town.

But all you ever see is the silence.

Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves.

With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do

just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space

museum —

What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory;

The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned

The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea & milk

in the bottom of a mug.

Or skin on an old tin of varnish you have to lift with

lineman's pliers.

A fly paper that hung thirty years in Bird Cooper's pantry

in Brighton.

The sounds of a cicada

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Sunday Muse #65

Fireblossom here with your Sunday Muse image to write to. I hope it stirs some good poetry! You know what to do...write, link, visit, enjoy.

Wednesday Muse: American Sentence

Hi Musers!  Good to see you all back from vacation. I just took a break and didn't do anything.  But I did think of some more prompts.

Today, I am going to introduce you all to the American Sentence if you haven't met it yet.  If you have, then I am helping you renew your acquaintance.  The American Sentence was created by Allen Ginsberg.  Ginsberg was born in 1926 in Newark. NJ and went to Columbia University in NYC.  He was one of the original Beat Poets along with Neal Cassady, Jack Keroac and William S. Burroughs.  As great and prolific a poet as he was, he couldn't get a handle on haiku, felt it didn't translate well into English.  LOL.  He was into Zen and into Japan but he couldn't do haiku.  I think it was the strict rules that he couldn't deal with.  Anyway, he created the American Sentence.  A complete sentence of 17 syllables that is a poem.

Odd?  Not really when you think that most of us write poetry in complete or incomplete sentences anyway.  Unlike haiku, the sentences can be titled.  We all have the thoughts that poetry has to be long and full of words.  Like the Japanese, I learned they do not.  So did Girnberg.  Here are a few below that he wrote to  inspire you:

• "Tompkins Square Lower East Side N.Y."
• "Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella."
• "Put on my tie in a taxi, short of breath, rushing to meditate."
• "That grey-haired man in business suit and black turtleneck thinks he's still young."
• "Bearded robots drink from Uranium coffee cups on Saturn's ring."
• "Crescent moon, girls chatter at twilight on the bus ride to Ankara."
• "Salmonella Lesson - Who knew a tainted cantaloupe could force me to sit and write all day."
• "Curiosity speaks - A stranger's glance and pointed finger prompted this poem I write, right now"

Ezra Pound once wrote:  "Condense, condense, condense" He would have better said "Condense."  I have been going through some of my older poems and condensing.  Do you ever do that?  Well, condense an old poem into a 17 syllable complete sentence or write a new one!  And here is a pic of handsome nerdy Allen (when he was young) to inspire you further.  Here is an American Sentence of my own:

Handsome nerdy Allen Ginsberg, couldn't write haiku so he created an all new poetry.

The Sunday Muse # 64

Hello everyone I hope you all are having a good weekend.  Next week will be hosted by the amazing poet Shay AKA Fireblossom, so I hope you will return then too, and see what wonderful musing photo she provides. 

Have fun everyone!

Wed Muse on Break This Week

Image Source 

Today Toni is taking a much-deserved Summer break but will be back next week with another wonderful prompt for you all.  The Sunday Muse is still up for those of you that want to participate.  Stay cool out there, and we look forward to seeing you all soon.

The Sunday Muse # 63

the butterfly jar by lostinthisphotograph 

Hello Musers and blogging buddies I hope you all are having a good 4th of July weekend.  I am back from my trip to the great outdoors of Eureka Springs AK for my daughter's beautiful wedding.  We had an absolutely lovely time.  Thank you Shay for holding down the fort and always having amazing photos for our musing pleasure!
You all know the score:
link up, visit others with comments,
and above all:
Have fun everyone!

Sunday Muse - Wednesday Muse # 14 - Keepin' Cool

Today we are re-posting Toni's wonderful prompt, so that everyone has a chance to see it link and participate.  Toni is taking a much deserved break today, but will be by to comment on linked posts.  We hope everyone has a great 4th of July.  Be safe and stay cool everyone!
Carrie 

The hot days of summer are near.  Already here it is in the 90's.  I am already plotting my plans to stay cool - other than staying inside with the air conditioning.  I am not one of those who enjoy the heat - I prefer the cold and snow of winter! 

When I do my daily walk, I go out early in a hat and with a bottle of iced water.  I do my shopping early in the morning as well.  I keep chunks of watermelon in the refrigerator for munching, cool showers during the day, and I dress in thin cotton dresses.  I cook in the cool of the day as well and use my slow cooker. Jugs of lemonade and iced tea and water take up space in the refrigerator.

What do you do to keep cool?  Dip in the river or pool?  Do as the Japanese do and eat noodles with ice cubes in the noodles?  Popsicles or Italian ices?  Reading in the shade under a tree?