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{2026 January Poetry Peeps Challenge}

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January 5, 2026

4:22 pm

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Musings on Extemporanea

Welcome to another year of Poetry Peeps Adventures!

Happy (Calendar) New Year, Peeps! You’re invited to the first challenge of the year in JANUARY, 2026! Here’s the scoop: we’re composing tricubes, those mathematically delightful three-to-the-third-power poems which have three syllables per line, three lines per stanza, and three stanzas. No theme. No rhyme. No other rules. (This is a short-but-sweet challenge, given that we don’t have a full month to ponder it.) Are you in? Good! You have …twenty-five days to craft your creation and share it on January 30st in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope you’ll join the fun!

I was so sad to miss the CONVERSATION about the Year in Conversation we had in 2025, but I’m struggling with a compromised immune system during ‘flu season, despite all my caution and immunization. Thank you to those who sent cards – yours are coming! Thank you to those who have sent your good wishes – so appreciated. It’s back to bed for me just now, but Happy January anyway. Keep your hands washed and your masks handy, and remember you are so well-loved.

{final pf of ’25: a poetry peeps wish of light, hope & peace}

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December 25, 2025

9:38 pm

6 Comments on {final pf of ’25: a poetry peeps wish of light, hope & peace}

General Coolness, On Writing, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! We did it! A very long year, but it’s nearly done, done, done. Thank you for being with us this year as we wrote poetry in conversation with each other and with the world. We don’t know yet what’s ahead thematically, but we’ll let you know the 2026 deets after January 4th when the Poetry Sisters put their heads together and figure out the next twelve month’s themes and challenges. Stay tuned!

Friends, I would have been writing this to you from other shores, except better sense intervened and kept us close to home this year. I’ll be happy to see friends abroad in June, but until then, I’m glad for the rain, and settling in to gratefully be a bit quiet and cozy at home.

As our overarching theme this month remains writing in conversation, and the words or ideas of ‘light,’ ‘hope,’ and ‘peace’ I thought I’d be fairly challenged with getting the words to fall together organically. I mean, granted – the December holidays, from Bodhi Day to Yalda, to Solstice to Hanukkah to Christmas are all about hope and light in one way or another, and light in the darkest part of the year is inevitably hopeful. But, peace… seems to be in a bit of short supply around any holiday that requires special foods and observances. I couldn’t figure out how to get peace as a concept to fit in organically…

From Process…

…until I started looking at these concepts from the opposite direction.

I started writing a Solstice poems a few years ago and shared a few. It’s an easy theme – the shortest day, the longest night, and facing forward to the idea that this is it, it’s Winter… but this is also the shortest day, and all days hereafter will be longer, even if by a minute, hallelujah, Amen. I even heard a brief mention of Solstice in the Advent homily as the reader said gleefully, “More light to come!” And we all cheered… but I found myself thinking, “…or, maybe we could just sit a minute with the cold and dark?” Admittedly, I was in a thinky mood and often homilies make my mind wander, but I realized that Christian religions, at least, seem only to do this ‘sit with the dark’ thing briefly, if at all. Some of us are weird about shadows and much prefer the sun and the shiny. Which, fair enough, but our insistence on only sunshine is imbalanced. We need the night, the moonlight , and the end of day. Plants don’t only need sunlight. Life doesn’t only exist by daylight. We can’t fast-forward the parts of living we don’t like, and dark exists for a reason… even if it makes us uncomfortable. Maybe especially then.

All times and seasons are part of our cycle, the turn of the wheel of days. Wherever we may be in one part of our pattern, we always know there’s more to come… The longer I live, the more I realize there’s no point in hating where we are. As my mother always said, “This, too, shall pass…”

…To Poetry

No matter how often I realize this, it always seems like… a new thought. Or, at least a thought I return to this again and again in poetry. I’ll choose to see it as a meditation instead of mere repetition. 😀

I paged through some of my poem forms because seasons – and recurring thoughts – tend to lend themselves to poems with repetitious forms. I started with a rondeau redoublé, but ended up with a villanelle (because end of year = lazy. I’ll return to the rondeau redoublé soon), a familiar friend. I leaned in to my love of alliteration as well – repeating thoughts deserve repeating sounds, after all – and just let myself ramble along until I came up with something. I’ll admit I’d forgotten how carefully one must choose the first line of the initial idea… I always start with that couplet of statements that feel solid enough to draw a poem out of, but boy, you’re really stuck with that first end word. Still, this came together quickly, and then lent itself to fiddling with for another day as the idea coalesced. This is the beauty of such a strict form – you only have so much wiggle room, so you have to make what you’ve come up with count. It’s not done, but I’m comfortable leaving it along for now.

More To Come

The deeper dark tempts spirits to succumb
As autumn urges sunset close to three,
The solstice signals, “There’s more light to come.”

Onto the scale of Mood, dark adds a thumb –
(Soul, persevere sans sunlight’s filigree
Though deeper dark tempts spirits to succumb.)

But, dark has devotees: add to its sum
in lightless hives, the avid worker bees.
The solstice signals there’s more light to come –

In sleeping soils. Both worms and fungi plumb,
And rots reveals arable amnesty.
As deeper dark tempts spirits to succumb,

All’s rising tides – there is no zero sum.
This season’s death makes life a guarantee,
And solstice signals, “There’s yet life to come.”

O, darkling world, near hidden from the sun,
Welcomed to slow repose as adoptees,
Your deeper darkness tempts some to succumb,
But solstice swears your best is yet to come.

This image was taken by Tech Boy in 2010, and it remains my favorite night sky photograph of his, clearly showing the December night sky in Iceland, where we were tooling around at some unearthly hour in zero-degree weather, chasing the aurora. We didn’t see it that night, but the Orion nebulae was a most excellent consolation.

I hope you are enjoying this most wonderful Boxing Day, are ready for Kwanzaa, and had a wondrous Chrismukkah. If you’d like to peruse more poetry, the Peeps have got you. Sara’s poem is here. Laura’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s poem is here. Liz’s poem is right here. Michelle K’s post is here. Molly’s post coincidentally joins the list here. The usual suspects may filter in throughout the weekend, so don’t forget to check back for the full round up. (NB: I’m having blog issues and there will be some updates going on, so if your commenting is more difficult than usual, apologies, and feel free to drop me a thought on my contract form or an email.)

The end of the month, the end of a year, and a recurring thought – all three things added together are a solid refrain of time keeps flowing, and we’ll keep going. How we do so is entirely up to us. We’ll continue to love and live in the light, but as the dark folds around us this season, I hope we can sit with it deliberately, explore its hidden corners and let it speak to us what stories we may need to be told. And as always, in sunlight or under the glow of the moon, you are ever so well-loved.


{on the eve of solstice}

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December 19, 2025

11:52 am

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Musings on Extemporanea

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! Just a reminder: you’re invited to this year’s capstone challenge for the month of December! We’ll be in conversation with the theme of light, hope, and peace. No form requirements, and no length rules – just vibes, and a theme. Are you in? You’ll want to start early this month to craft your poetic creation(s), because we’ll share our offerings on December 26th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. Light and hope to you! We hope you’ll join us in closing out the year.

If one wants to be technically correct, we’re not quite to Solstice yet, that’s Sunday night, but I saw this Wendell Berry poem and couldn’t resist. I feel like the first line would make a beautiful peace of art in its own right, but the poem as a whole is just – mysterious and beautiful, just like a lovely, new moon night feels. Maybe it’s not always Sol Invictus. Maybe sometimes it’s Luna Invicta. Or, Nox Bonum. Maybe goodness and peace in darkness is something we can make work, too.

To Know the Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
-Wendell Berry, from Soul Food – Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds

{pf: poetry peeps eavesdrop & overhear}

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November 28, 2025

5:06 am

5 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps eavesdrop & overhear}

Musings on Extemporanea

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to this year’s capstone challenge for the month of December! Here’s the scoop: We’ll be in conversation with the theme of light, hope, and peace. No form requirements, and no length rules – just vibes, and a theme. Are you in? You’ll want to start early this month to craft your creation(s), because we’ll share our offerings on December 26th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. Light and hope to you! We hope you’ll join us in closing out the year.

Friends, welcome to the week of gratitude – I hope you’re enjoying not just the food, but the chance to pause, think, read, and otherwise exist and make space for and process the events of a year rapidly receding into the rear view. There have been so many gut-wrenching challenges and losses this year, and for those struggling to finish strong, we see you; we see you, and we love you. ♥

As always, I look at our November challenge and think, “Right, we came up with an easy one for Thanksgiving week on purpose!” Aaaand, every year, I think, “Curses, foiled again.” Partially, this time was almost a fail because I suffer from a sort of internal insulation this time of year, as I walk around wearing hats over my hears, scarves that might touch my lobes and make movement… I don’t know, noisier or something… Coats and sweaters are noisy, okay? It’s harder to be nosy when you’re bundled up. And the nosiness is the point, here.

From Process…

Knowing that I was going into the city this past weekend, I tried to be conscious of …other people. One of the weird things about how people act in cities, even small cities like San Francisco, is the studied non-observance that we wield in order to allow ourselves privacy in public. Of course, here it only goes so far – friends from New York who have relocated here sometimes say they miss the ability to avoid interactions and ignore people. People on the West Coast will make eye contact and smile (frequently they’ll even greet you, which low-key alarms many, tee hee). Our weekend plans included a restaurant and a light show, so I figured sitting and eating or sitting in the audience before the show would be the best place to listen in. …Of course, that was before we realized that carpooling and not taking the train meant we’d get stuck behind an accident on the bridge, miss our reservation, circle all four parking garages in a two block area for thirty-five minutes, and have to park a half mile from our location. 😈 Which also meant we’d have to hurry up California Street to Mason before we could get to the venue… Oh, wait. Allow me to show you:

Image of The Fairmont Hotel courtesy of the National Register of Historical Places.
Note how precipitously the road drops away. Imagine me trying to look cute whilst climbing.

That part of California St. is about a 24.8% grade, so it’s not that steep, but we took it to avoid Leavenworth, which in parts has a 31.8% grade… Honestly, it all becomes relative with the panting and perspiring after a point. We all agreed to take the hill at our own paces. My pace required stopping halfway to look down and marvel. And then a speedwalking couple passed me and I heard this priceless conversation:

“Why are we going this way? Did you take me this way because you were cold?” The man, in tones of disbelief.

“I’m not cold anymore,” his partner sang out, stomping along in three-inch stilettos, clad in a strappy, slinky, slip-dress, arms and legs swinging bare in the cool November air…

I started upwards again grinning. That’s going to be how I choose my routes everywhere from now on – by vibes and core temperature. Let’s take this hill because I’m cold, dear. It’ll be fun, dear.

…To Poetry

In a more thoughtful moment, I wondered if I should take the whole “why did you bring me this way” as a message from the Universe that this moment required a more serious poem, but… nope. As I coughed for ten or twelve minutes at the top (bronchoconstriction in cold, dry air is a beast), we crossed the road, and climbed the stairs to the cathedral and joined the line. For distraction I made up a quickie haiku:

We arrive, aglow,
flushed with triumph, all bearing
air-kisses from the Bay

I realized later that poem doesn’t exactly count, since it doesn’t use the actual quotation – and it also doesn’t hold to our annual theme of “conversation” since I skipped the whole exchange. So – I came back with a triolet, which is a form that is delightful for a short poem built on a brief conversation. Also enjoy the images of California as looking down from the Fairmont (these are images taken from famous SF posters).

Running Late on California Street
Why, when there are other paths,
Why are we going this way?
(*wheeze* – Asthmatic aftermath)
What, were there no other paths?
Scowl forms as I do the math:
Be late? Or in disarray?
When there are no other paths,
Where are we going? This way.

My health nonsense has crept up on me to the point that I hadn’t realized how much I don’t go anywhere anymore, so this whole evening – traffic, missed dinner, weird parking and all – was a gift, and the poem embellishes the memory.

The rest of the Poetry Peeps are assembling! Laura’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s poem is here. Susan Thomsen was ready for this challenge in her honor – and her poem is here. Michelle K’s poem is here, and Jone’s poem is here. More Peeps will doubtless drop by as soon as the food coma wears off, so don’t forget to drop by later in the weekend for the rest of the roundup. Meanwhile, Buffy Silverman is our Poetry Friday hostess this week – thank you, Buffy for introducing your cousin! – so don’t forget to pop by and treat yourself to even more poetry.

Plenty of time this past year I’ve asked myself, “Why this way? Why couldn’t some other plan have worked out?” And honestly, many of us have felt perhaps pushed into narrow paths we could have gleefully done without. Here’s to making the best of the walkway we’re on – whether slogging through sloughs or inching up inclines, keep marching, friends. Progress is possible – if we keep it moving.

Walk on with hope in your heart – you are so well-loved.

Happy🍁Weekend.

{poetry friday poem: after Donika Kelly}

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November 14, 2025

12:52 pm

5 Comments on {poetry friday poem: after Donika Kelly}

Mental Health, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Random Notes and Errata

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! Just a reminder that our challenge for the month of November is composing ‘Eavesdropped & Overheard’ poems in tribute to our pal at the long-running Chicken Spaghetti blog, Susan Thomsen. I look forward to your post or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals on NOVEMBER 28th!

And speaking of Susan, today’s poetry prompt comes her, and a poem she shared a couple of weeks back, Donika Kelly’s Poem To Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things. In it, the poet hearkens back to that thicc and wondrous baby hippo captured our hearts during lockdown, then turns her attention back to her own heart.

From Process…

Now, I wasn’t going to do this challenge. I am truly bad with memes — some of what other people find funny or cute comes off as either sad, weird, or mean to me, and hello, welcome to my sideways brain, I guess. But then, I read Susan’s poem, and all the poems of the others taking part in the challenge, and they were so good that I thought of one meme that hasn’t left me alone.

Yeah, so – remember the viral ‘Paws-In Test’ from about six months back? I …disliked that so much (once again: weird brain. NO SHADE whatsoever if you thought it was cute. It a fundamental way, it is cute, because: dogs). The ‘test’ was owners putting their hands in a stack and silently requesting their dog to take part in their weird human activity. And some of the dogs, you could see the gears turning as they looked from one of their human pack to the next, trying to figure out what the ask was… trying to make sure that they were doing whatever was being asked of them “right.” And egads, that seemed way too much like the social tests of life for me, and all of my oh, noooo anxiety kicked in, just looking at those sweet liquid eyes, staring at the humans being …baffling, and waiting for…something… ❗

…To Poetry

However, the point of the whole exercise is to find more in the ephemeral memes and ‘moments’ observed in the social media stratosphere, and I love that Donika begins with the word “observe” and leans in with just that – forcing us to look back and remember the delightful chonk that is Fiona, and how the posts from the zoo lightened up our hearts in a heavy time. Hadn’t love, the poet seems to realize, once done the same for her? And thus, I found my way into writing …some kind of poem. For once, it helped that I did this last minute, so forced myself to truly lean in to the mentor text: no rhyme, no wordplay, just… thoughts. (Or, vibes, no? I mean, if we’re talking memes, we are fully USING the lingo.)

“A Poem to Reminds Myself of the Inutility of External Validation”

After Donika Kelly

Observe them, seated,
facing, arms extended,
hands stacked, awaiting:

Head tilts, calculation
a silent klaxon blaring
whatnow/whatway/what’sright
as longing takes a gamble
lifts paw: a closed circuit,
validation lights up faces.

Sweet puppies, always,
forever, the goodest good dogs.

But you –
Down, Girl. Find it!
Sniff out your OWN path.

tanita s. davis draft, 2025

It’s Carol who is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup today, so pop by for an apple from her orchard. Remember – there is no ‘right’ way to act. There is no ‘correct’ response. There is only you, and yours, and the choices you make to fulfill your needs. And, you. are. enough. of a majority to rule. Now, off to find your own way, you good being.

Happy Friday.


{pf: poetry peeps burn down a haibun}

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October 31, 2025

1:00 am

11 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps burn down a haibun}

General Coolness, Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of November! Here’s the scoop: We’re composing ‘Eavesdropped & Overheard’ poems, in tribute to our friend of the long-running Chicken Spaghetti blog, Susan Thomsen. Much has changed since last we accepted this challenge in 2022 – including the number of newspapers with accessible, paywall-free ‘Overheard’ articles. Never fear, however – here’s useful scuttlebutt from DC to points West, and from areas all over if you’re not as much of a in-real-life stickybeak as the rest of us. Are you in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on NOVEMBER 28th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. Join the fun!

We did it! The Poetry Sisters managed to all show up at a pre-write meet-up! It had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with how impossible the prompt felt this month! Nothing at all! We just missed each other!! And needed to vent about prose poems! And stuff!

Okay, so we had a brief moment of “WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS!?” and we couldn’t recall, since prompts for the year are thought up in one fell swoop, each of us nursing our potion of choice, and who even knows what we were thinking (or drinking) in January. So… here we begin with a haibun, which in itself feels challenging as they are chiefly autobiographical ‘prose poems’ with subtracted lines. We add poet Torrin A. Greathouse’s transitional step of an additional erasure poem with an added element of flame creating a ‘burning’ haibun, which then collapses into the traditional haibun concluding haiku (perhaps reflecting how, like cinders, the original poem crumbles in on itself?), and…our annual theme of ‘poems in conversation.’ Hmmm…🤔😶

From Process…

As we talked about where each of us felt we could take the poem, I had basically bupkis, until I thought about burning in the most literal, elemental way. California has had it with fire – burn scars, burn years, and burn names. The first autumn after the Tubbs fire, I hyperventilated when smelling woodsmoke from someone’s fireplace. When it has destroyed so much of what you love – the Caldor fire took out part of the thousand acre summer camp where I worked from age 16-21 and took the first steps towards adulthood – it leaves scars. I don’t think I’ll be able to happily sit around a crackling campfire ever again.

Despite the need for this to come from an autobiographical space, I felt like I needed boundaries on all of these pesky feelings, however. Historically, we all know how I feel about unrhymed and unruled poetry prompts 😖 – they become unhinged and unruly in my hands. Because I need boundaries, I had to define a prose poem first. From my extensive reading, I concluded that it is prose that utilizes the elements of poetry – notably alliteration, repetition, rhyme, literary devices, and figurative language. Except for the line breaks and traditional shaping of poetry, it’s a poem. So. I tried to toe the line between the two.

…To Poetry

Summer’s heat, it singes – and sometimes smokes. That first frosty day of fall startles, sharp with shivers and then a stench scenting of lives imploding, futures ending, and pasts unraveled to loss. Smoke lingers in its echoes – of Tubbs, named Fire Most Destructive until Campfire came along, destroying Paradise, and thieving the title. And on it glitters and razes and crackles and roars – the Mendocino, Dixie, Creek, Caldor – each demolition a diminishment, a detraction, a destruction of the northernmost luster of the shine so many take to my home state, O Golden State, O, sweet home – burnt bitter in the smoke of a thousand blazes. At the dawn of time the light of flame meant safety and home, a warning to predators, a cookfire bringing simple warmth and security. That was a human story we once knew, now the pall of smoke that first cold dusk raises a blister of woe, whispers of panicked flight and cindered ends, of crumbling foundations and never agains.

And now, we begin the burning. The second phase of the burning haibun is meant to represent a state wholly different from the first, so I went from heat to cold:

It singes – that first frosty day of fall,
Sharp with shivers, scenting futures and pasts.
Smoke lingers, destructive paradise, and it glitters –
A diminishment, a detraction, a destruction of the shine so golden –
O, sweet smoke of a thousand dawn predators,
Bringing a story that whispers
of flight.

I like how …ominous that one sounds. I tried to bring that sense of menacing portent to the haiku. (I also tried hard not to use the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic form, because Japanese haiku actually doesn’t do so slavishly, and I need to get out of the elementary school version of haiku someday.)

heat singes, smoke startles,
lingers, burnt bitter
warning of crumbling

I wasn’t entirely satisfied with this — though I think it fulfilled the requirement. But, I wanted to write a burn-book burning haibun. Why not use Shakespearean insults? (“Your brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after voyage.” As You Like It [Act 2, Scene 7]; “Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat.” Henry V [Act 4, Scene 4] 🐐, or what has to be one of my all-time favorites “Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!” King Lear [Act 2, Scene 2]. Imagine being insulted as the “unnecessary” letter z!🤣) Or can you imagine a poetic “yo mama” battle? There were so many ways to ‘burn’ with this, once I was able to let go of being literal… I’ll have come back to those another day. Meanwhile, others have emerged victorious from the burning! Tricia’s poem is here. Sara’s poem is here. Laura’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s poem is here, and Liz’s poem is here. Michelle K went the second mile with two haibun, while Karen rose to beautifully meet the challenge here. Carol’s poem transformation is here. More Poetry Peeps may check in throughout the weekend, so check back later for the full roundup. And if this challenge wrecked you, no worries! We’ll catch up with you next time.

Poetry Friday today is hosted today by the autumn-appropriate Jone Rush MacCulloch, whose Halloween-esque haiku and full-moon artwork I’m enjoying on the calendar she gave me. Thanks doubly, Jone. Though sometimes it feels like the world is on fire, our present suffering is no more than others have faced in other nations at other times, and it, too, shall pass. I remind myself as well as anyone else who needs to hear it: trouble is neither as special nor as unique as we might think – which means we are not alone in it, especially if we look up and reach out to those around us who are very likely feeling some kind of way, too. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum – in hoc una sumus. Remember, at this and every other time, you are so well-loved.

{the poetry peeps test tritinas}

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September 25, 2025

11:56 pm

16 Comments on {the poetry peeps test tritinas}

Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of October! Here’s the scoop: As invited by Poetry Magazine, we’re composing burning haibun. Not regular old haibun, folks. These highlight the internal landscape of memory, and within them, something somewhere must BURN. Perhaps it’s your candle at both ends. The stub of wax in your jack-o-lantern. Perhaps it’s just your heartburn, or your indignation. We cannot wait to find out. As always, these poems will continue our theme of writing in conversation. Are you still in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on OCTOBER 31st in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. THIS is gonna be LIT (see what I did there?), so we hope you’ll join the fun!

Greetings, friends, and a glorious decorative gourd season to all. I have a bale of hay in the garage, and feel I am getting right into the spirit of things (technically, the bale of hay is for the Boy’s archery targets, and then the garden, but I can pretend it’s for autumn, yes? Yes).

Science – and my very own science experiment autoimmune disorder – has recently introduced me to the joys of descriptive disorder names. Had you ever heard of Multiple Evanescent White Dot Syndrome? Well, neither had I – but what a delightfully graphical designation. Joining such monikers as Alien Hand and Restless Leg syndromes, MEWDS rather less delightfully is an inflammation of the optic nerve and can temporarily occlude one’s sight in the eye affected. That is far less than fun, but *hand waves* details, right? At least it has a fun name.

It you may have guessed, it’s been A Month around here. And if you’ve also guessed that I have yet again missed the Poetry Sisters meet-up to discuss and strategize our monthly form experiment, you’d be right. Which was disappointing. I wanted to talk about this form. The tritina has such potential. I love Tamar Yoseloff’s description of it as the sestina’s square root, and an “instrument of discovery.” The repetition is intended to pull something out of the poet, to hold it up, and allow examination from all sides.

From Process…

I was aware that the villanelle and the sestina, the more familiar repetitious poetry forms, were written to be accompanied by music – thus the repeating refrains. I don’t think I really leaned in to the musical aspect of this as much as I wanted to – let’s blame my foggy brain, shall we? – but I had a song stuck in my head when I wrote it. Billy Joel’s 1989 classic, And So It Goes. To put me in the correct frame of mind (and because I can’t listen to actual music when I work), I read the lyrics before I began.

It’s such a… resigned song. It offers the listener an unvarnished self, all poor decisions and untethered past presented with open hands. Here I am, the song seems to say. “All this could be yours – bad gambles and all. I find it rather charming, if a little sad. Written by a man who stumbled from three marriages into his current fourth, his experiences haven’t seemed to leave him confident that this whole self will be accepted, though offered whole-heart. And… so it goes. Asi es la vida. That’s life.

I brainstormed longhand to arrive at a trio of words which sturdy enough to bear repetition. Originally I believe the Poetry Sisters had thought to use all the same word, but I don’t know if that thought fell apart or not. My words I drew from what was on my mind – what I was feeling about the news, my medical life, my work. The words were… grey-shaded. Exhaustion. Weariness. Depletion. Betrayal. Grief. Carrying. Forfeit. Weight. What on earth could anyone try and ‘discover’ from that?

…To Poetry

Those words felt… disagreeable but when I pulled a few I wanted out of the morass, ‘Undone’ and ‘Diminished’ spoke to me… Remember I said that villanelle and sestina were originally composed for music? These two words are musical. There’s a thing called a “diminished chord.” It’s described as sounding tense, unstable, and dissonant, often “spooky,” “sinister,” or “eerie.” What if instead of simply disagreeable and bad, something undone is diminished because it’s unresolved? So… here’s my beginning at playing with that thought. Note that this is the DRAFTIEST of drafts – I feel like “in conversation” vanished from this entirely – yet I like the feel and the wordplay of it, trying to wrest music from madness, and a note of triumph from an unfinished chord of defeat.

it weighs on me: what lies undone
in creased and wrinkled brain diminished?
No laurels wreath the unresolved.

Opaqued, the path lies unresolved.
Roads untaken drift, and, undone
shrink; a destiny diminished.

Atlases: obscured. Undiminished:
thirst for adventure. Re-resolved:
To leap. Not done can’t be undone.

Past comes undone: presently diminished lies our future, unresolved…
And so it goes.

This felt like it ought to have the title at the end, to add weight to the envoi. All of the uncertainty and ambiguity, holding up an idea, twisting and turning it, examining it in the light. Despite the desire for different, in some parts of our lives, we’ve lost our maps, we’re drifting, and we’re looking ahead at a future that seems… diminished. Distorted. But if we want a different present, we’ll have to tell ourselves a new story, to enact a future that is different from our past.

And so it goes. That’s just life.

Part of “just life” is also having a poem you’re not sure you like, which seems to be afflicting all of the Poetry Sisters this month. Nevertheless, Tricia’s take on the tritana can be found here. Cousin Mary Lee’s poem is here. Liz’s poem is here, and Laura’s tritina is hitting next month’s theme early here. Karen’s poem is here, and Michelle K’s art and tritina are here. Carol V’s poem is here. More Poetry Peeps may post throughout the day, so make sure you circle back at some point this weekend and find the links here.

Poetry Friday today is hosted at the delightful Poem Farm of Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. Thanks, Amy. It’s been a long, strange trip this month, but as always, there’s life on the other side of your screen. Please go outside. Don’t forget to appreciate the things that you have – beauty and peace, the signs of the changing season, favorite foods, decorative gourds. Touch grass. Hydrate. Reach out to friends. And remember, you are well-loved.

{this wasn’t on my September bingo card, but I’ll take it}

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September 4, 2025

11:30 am

4 Comments on {this wasn’t on my September bingo card, but I’ll take it}

Book News, Musings on Extemporanea


Sometimes, the ways in which we are really, really fortunate are breath-taking. I was blessed to have a second chance at publishing when Katherine Tegen took an interest in my work. I’ve been privileged to work with really wonderful editors, copyeditors, and designers at Harper-Collins. Brittany Jackson’s art is a-mazing, and I am blessed to have FOUR of my books sporting covers of hers. Berry’s tangerine (and slightly rage-fueled) energy in this illustration even caught Booklist’s eye. Drinking deep of the last dregs of summer, I am happily readying for the brilliant, sizzling colors of decorative gourd season, looking forward to my book’s release in a couple more weeks, and gratefully counting my blessings.

{pf: poetry peeps are pen-pals with poetry}

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August 28, 2025

11:04 pm

8 Comments on {pf: poetry peeps are pen-pals with poetry}

Musings on Extemporanea, Part and Poetry, Poetry Friday, Seven Sisters

Welcome to Poetry Friday!

Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of September! Here’s the scoop: We’re going to take up the challenge of tritina. Invented by poet Marie Ponsot, this less restrictive younger sibling of the sestina uses three repeated words to end three tercets. The order of word-endings for the tercets are 123, 312, 231, with a final line acting as the envoi, featuring all three words in the 1-2-3 order used in the first stanza. Additionally, we’ll continuing with our theme of poetry in conversation, in whatever way that is individually defined. Sound a little tricky? Maybe? Are you still in? You’ll have a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering on September 26th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope all of you will join the fun!

It hardly seems possible that the harvest season is here and that summer is slouching towards completion. The choral season has kicked off, and we were greeted the first night of rehearsal with bushels of cherry tomatoes from someone’s out-of-control indeterminate plant. From our own wildly out of control mini-orchard, we have picked two tree’s worth of pears, and three tree’s worth of apples, most of the mulberries and we’re just getting started on the table grapes that are turning a deep purple. We’re feeling particularly grateful to family and friends and have not yet stooped to midnight produce deliveries to strangers… but we’re getting close. (THIS is why we don’t grow zucchini anymore…) I feel my Depression-Era grandma’s memory peering over my shoulder as I chop out the wormy bits and bag apples for the freezer. (Ninety-six cups and counting. 🫣) To be honest, I am grateful for both the bounty and for the distraction – it widens my focus from the continuing heaviness of grief in the world, and helps me gain a little bit of perspective. Seedtime and harvest persists, in spite of the destruction of so many other reliable cycles.

From Process…

Processes continuing was on my mind this month. Having missed yet another gathering of the Poetry Princesses, I was determined to make up for the loss of writing in community by really leaning in to the poet herself. I read a few Giovanni poems before circling back to this one, more to hear her voice than anything else. Then, I listened to the poet read this poem aloud – from a video of the first season of HBO’s Def Comedy Jam from 2001.

Writing in conversation with a narrative poem is tricky. I found I wanted to imitate the poem more have a discussion with it, or with the poet. After reading the questions in the poem, I realized that Giovanni’s interrogation asked questions only human beings could answer. In essence, where are we taking poetry? Where has it been seen? Is it lost, and useless, as many people suspect (I admit to still being annoyed that the NPR Books newsletter a few weeks ago asked, “Whatever happened to poetry?” with apparently no irony intended)? Have we forgotten what gifts the arts have given us which have carried us through to this current moment? Was what carried us poetry? Does it have a place, in this blues-making world? What will allow poetry, stories, art in general – emotion expressed in imagery, allegory, rhyme, or meter – to persist?

…To Poetry

I’m not generally a person who likes to write poems about poetry, but that seemed to be the assignment. Though there are many other things Giovanni could be talking about or addressing her words to, I chose to take her words literally and look at poetry across the table. I dislike talking about poetry in general because I try to avoid making direct and sweeping statements about arts. I have Opinions – so many – about what I like in poetry, what I think is overdone, and what is definitively not to my taste, nor ever will be. Nikki Giovanni seems to have had opinions throughout her career, too – but here, she works to subvert both readers’ expectations and possibly her own by writing to poetry as if it is both audience and speaker, confessor and consort, both the discarded art and the callous deserter. I attempted to mimic the poet’s confiding tone and close, fron-porch-conversational vibe:

Sing With Me, Poem

After Nikki Giovanni’s “Talk to Me, Poem. I Think I Got the Blues.”

Sing with me, Poem.
A solo just now
feels like spotlight
and stage fright.

Have you crooned loss and lament, Poem?
A lot of poems serenade on setbacks,
hum the hundred thousand hymns
of ‘alone’ and being left,
of the broken and bereft.

Hear how melody marks your trail –
constructing cairns rife with rhythm.
Stanza beckons scansion,
Employing unexpected enjambment, as
Pas-de-deux, couplets kiss,
Alliterating the way to bliss.

I know: blank verse is more respected.
Too much rhyme’s mostly rejected
(Think Dickinson and “Yellow Rose -”
Some only stan a poet who loves prose.)
But… who sings the tune without a beat?
Meter sans rhyme seems incomplete.

So, what’s next for you, Poem?
You’ve done American idyll,
Been burnished on plinths,
brayed from pulpits, and
laureled by laureates. Even my socials
Sing your songs on Instagrammed posts
passed along.

…can we sing with you, Poem?
Even if we don’t have the words?
What makes a song enough to be heard?

Despite what all else Giovanni’s poem asks, I find the real question is, what will make poetry persist? I think the answer is… WE WILL. And we’re already doing it, right here in this community. Liz’s persistence is here. Tricia’s poem is here, and Michelle K’s poem is here. Denise’s poem is here. More Poetry Peeps might swing by with their creative conversations with Nikki Giovanni’s poem, and I’ll round ’em up here by the end of the weekend. Meanwhile, coffee aficionado and all-round lovely person Karen Edmisten – sharing her own delightful poetic conversation – is our Poetry Friday hostess today. “>Thanks, Karen!

There’s a lot of moving parts in this world, and a lot of feelings and thoughts about that to process. As long as there’s emotion in need of expression, there will be poetry. As long as there are people, there will be emotions, and words. As long as there are circumstances which delight, confuse, infuriate, grieve, and annoy us (with things like too many apples), there will be a poem to illuminate, celebrate, or merely to elucidate. In the meantime, don’t forget to wash your hands – the creeping crud is surging yet again. Hydrate. Dress your bed with gorgeous sheets. Call your youngest family member and horrify them with your use of ‘stan.’ Live a little. Love a lot. And remember, your current circumstances won’t last forever. In this and every moment, you are well-loved.