Poetry Monthly

The theme for February was borders and they featured in your poetry in a variety of ways: metaphorical, lyrical and physical, often as framing devices and even boundaries in the mind. The garden was exceptionally popular but it rarely featured bog standard features such as lawns and rosebushes or washing lines. Noo’s idea was fresh and liberating, a big thank you. Here are three beauties you came up with:

Pat G’s gorgeous poem creates atmosphere and extends moment and time with skill:

http://www.abctales.com/story/pat-g/karelia-poetry-monthly

Entrapment and the culture of marijuana was handled brilliantly in Phillip Sidney’s poetic garden:

http://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/gardening-poetry-monthly

The creative process, mushrooms and prolific writers. A luminescent orb of a poem from Noo:

http://www.abctales.com/story/noo/prolific-poetry-monthly

For March we have Silver Spun Sand, a wonderful and prolific poet on ABCTales, and her brief promises a technical challenge:

‘To repeat something is the simplest form of music, the simplest way to secure attention.  It is fundamental to how we think; we learn by repetition, arguably language itself arose from it, and hardly surprising that, used deliberately and carefully, repetition is a source of powerful literary effects.  Your assignment is to compose a poem making extensive use of repetition. For instance, beginning each line or sentence with, ‘Perhaps...’, or, ‘And...’ even with a short phrase, like, ‘Almost as if...’ Maybe plump for a striking, individual word such as, ‘chatoyant’, or ‘mimsy’.  Repetitions need not necessarily occur in every single line, but should appear several times.  Most importantly, strive to utilise repetition to create a sense of energy, intensity and excitement, demonstrated admirably by Edgar Allen Poe. No prizes, incidentally, for guessing the poem’s title:

“How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells,
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells –
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!”

(The Bells, 1849)

I can’t wait to see what you come up with. Enjoy and thanks for your time.

See you next month.

Ray

Photo Credit: http://tinyurl.com/j7332gr