The Stafford Challenge, Day 25

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964. That Beatle performance on TV was dynamic, influential, catalytic . . . it started the British Invasion, bands from the UK flooding American radio and changing the direction and development of popular music in the US. Because of the Beatles, kids in the US began playing guitar and drums. That’s how I got started as a musician! I began a poem on this event yesterday using the monotetra form, which is quite difficult, so I wasn't able to pull off the poem until today. The monotetra is a quatrain (a four-line stanza) with 8-syllable lines all rhyming with each other (aaaa) . . . and the ending line has to be something said twice (4 syllables each). Here's a link to a description of the monotetra. In this poem, I have four monotetra stanzas; is that a tetra-monotetra?! Anyway, I used quite a lot of slant rhyme here. The doubled ending line I found quite tough to make sound natural. Here goes . . . Beatlemania —monotetra The Beatles played Ed Sullivan sixty years ago today, and I watched. “I want to hold your hand,” they sang. Girls screamed. They sang. Girls screamed. They sang, “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.” Paul’s dad had told them, drop the yeahs — too American. Well, now here: Beatlemania, Beatlemania. They spurred the British invasion: The Animals, The Who, Herman’s Hermits, The Kinks. Americans never the same, never the same. The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five. Music revolution, all live. Rock and roll will never outlive The Beatles’ jive, the Beatles’ jive. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Day 24

My girlfriend Renee and I were at the Hearst Art Center's opening of a photography show today, and we came upon a magnetic poetry board, with movable words and parts of fantasy creatures: feathered torsos, shark heads, quetzalcoatl wings, and so on. Totally legit for an art center named for a poet, James Hearst! Here's the little poem I "wrote" on that board. Took about a minute or minute-and-a half. It's not a haiku, technically, but it does feature 5/7/5 syllables, and a title, as well as monorhyme, so a micropoem, I guess. Enjoy! Four-Eyed Snail ferocious linger vision caramel sister velvet blaze breezer —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Magnetic Poetry Board, Hearst Art Center Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

Day 15 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2024

Day 15. Here's an intro from Day 15 of 2013: Tax day, everyone. Hope you didn't forget!   ;-)   Also, "the ides of April." And exactly halfway through National Poetry Month. Can you believe how quickly it's gone by? Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo suggestion: “we’d like to encourage you to . . . become inspired by the wide, wonderful, and sometimes wacky world of postage stamps. . . . [S]tamps are a quasi-lyrical, quasi-bizarre look into what different cultures (or at least their postal authorities) hold dear.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a middle poem. Some people feel stuck in the middle; others like being in the middle of things. There are foods that are known for their middles (like jelly doughnuts and empanadas). So poem your way to, within, or away from the middle today.” I found a postage stamp that features the axolotl, a Mexican salamander. Axolotls are renowned for their cute smiles, and they are sought after for aquariums. My favorite are the leucistic axolotls, who are pink, like the one pictured below. They are sometimes called Mexican walking fish, though they are not fish at all. They have three pairs of reddish external gills that form a kind of halo behind their heads. Here's the postage stamp: Today, I'm not using a received form but rather quatrains rhymed aaaa, almost — a form invented for the occasion. This kind of rhyming is called monorhyme. As usually I'm also melding the prompts. The Axolotl Curious indeed is the little axolotl: a so-called walking fish, but not a fish at all. He sports a glorious, pink-fringed, feathery wattle, and lives his days and nights underwater. But if he finds that his water is no good, or other misfortunate conditions, you’d be shocked to see the axolotl shed his gills, grow lungs, and move up on the land. It’s rare, but it can happen. The axolotl can straddle different environments. Little shapeshifter, tadpole to lizard, a middle creature. Mighty indeed is the axolotl. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Here's another bit of trivia . . . the 50 peso Mexican bank note features the axolotl. Click on the image below to see it larger. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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Day 20 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2022

Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “write a poem that anthropomorphizes a kind of food. It could be a favorite food of yours, or maybe one you feel conflicted about.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “[W]rite a poem using at least three of the following six words. Or go for extra credit and use all six. Here are the six words:   1. Content   2. Double   3. Guide   4. Meet   5. Pump   6. Suit  ” Okay, mashing up the two prompts today. I use all six words; not just meet but also the homophone meat (said seven times in the poem — eight if you count the title), and I cheat by replacing pump with a sound-alike word, in consonance. A monorhyme sonnet, plus a Shakespeare quotation! Meat Speaks Using all of the six words: meet, double, suit, content, pump, guide That’s me, folks! I’m glad to meet ya. My girlfriend says, don’t eat so much red meat. I can’t help it! I’m all meat. I’m double meat, triple even. Sorry to all my veget- arian friends. Sorry if it doesn’t suit you, no salad here, no kale, dang it! Nothing, nothing, nothing as sweet as prime rib. I’m content to toot my own horn. Chicken, snake, rabbit, it’s all meat! Friends, take a seat, no pomp and circumstance — pffft! I’m your guide to everything meat. Did I say meat, already? I did?  MEAT! —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]             Image by artist 14070813 on Pixabay. I think this is the first time I've done this kind of sonnet in the blog. I've written here Clarean sonnets, curtal, English (also called Shakespearean), Italian (also called Petrarchan), haiku sonnets, hay(na)ku sonnets, even hybrid sonnets, but this is the first time I've done a monorhyme sonnet (where all the lines are rhymed to one sound . . . though I do use a bit of slant rhyme or half rhyme for variety in this one). Did you get the Shakespeare quotation? Othello says, "“Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!” The words pomp and circumstance have taken on an importance beyond Shakespeare's coinage. It's a very common phrase now, referring to ceremony (sometimes said dismissively); in fact, the music that's traditionally and familiarly played at graduations is called "Pomp and Circumstance." In three weeks, I'll hear it twice: first, attending graduation as a professor at our university, and second, when my daughter Melina graduates from college the next day! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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