Poems with Mary Lee: Casting Out

I’ve been sharing some poems I am writing this month with Bud Hunt, but I should mention an amazing project that Mary Lee Hahn has been doing over A Year of Reading. Mary Lee has been exploring the use of Creative Commons and attribution, and each day, she shares an image she finds, with information about the image and how to use it. And then, she urges us to write poems inspired by the image.

Here’s what Mary Lee says:

“Common Inspiration–Uncommon Creations.” 

Each day in April, I will feature media from the Wikimedia Commons (“a database of 16,565,065 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute”) along with bits and pieces of my brainstorming and both unfinished and finished poems.
I will be using the media to inspire my poetry, but I am going to invite my students to use my daily media picks to inspire any original creation: poems, stories, comics, music, videos, sculptures, drawings…anything!
You are invited to join the fun, too! Leave a link to your creation in the comments and I’ll add it to that day’s post. I’ll add pictures of my students’ work throughout the month as well.

Yesterday, she shared this interesting b/w photo of a woman fishing. The image got me thinking about who took the photo and who is watching her fish, and I came up with this poem:

“There’s some metaphor at work here,”
the first whispered to the other,
who lounged against the rotting log,
watching, waiting, wondering.
“Oh,” the second replied, handing the first
a sandwich she had made for them to savor
while she fished solo from the rock,
“and what is that?”
The first took a thoughtful bite, and leaned back,
eyes scanning the sky
as the sound of the line from her pole
zinged its way into his mind.
“I don’t rightly know,” he admitted,
“but surely there is a metaphor swimming in that river.”
The second nodded,
“And if anyone will catch it,
it will be her.”
The two men sat up now, dazzled by her expertise
as she pulled and twisted the pole,
the lure sliding and slinking along the water’s surface,
guiding the fish towards her
through some unspoken magic that neither the fish
nor the men,
nor even the father who had once taught her,
could even begin to fathom,
and then, as was her want, she let them all go,
set them loose,
so she could walk home alone, and free,
without their thoughts and talk crowding her head.

I am also doing some podcasting with Vocaroo, which is a free no-registration podcasting site. Here is the podcast for this poem:

Record and upload voice >>

Peace (in poetry),
Kevin

 

5 Comments
  1. Kevin,
    You are a creative fool! I mean that in the best way. I hopped over to see what you were doing after reading your great poem about the kid dangling from the window just out of sight from the photograph. Clever! Now I find this fine poem. Where are you finding the time? I was trying to do a poem form a day, but have felt blank the last few days. Thanks for directing me to Mary Lee’s project.

    • I am happily the poetry fool.
      🙂
      I write every morning. Sometimes, it works. That I have friends posting images to inspire me makes it even more interesting.
      I am glad that might be writing with us.
      Kevin

  2. I saw your poem over at Mary Lee’s post & love the ‘story’ you found in it, Kevin. I grew up in a small town until age 12 & remember the men hanging out, watching particularly the women going by, & this imagined scene certainly causes me to remember. I like those lines around the ‘unspoken’ magic. And as always, I like hearing you read the poems. Thanks!

  3. Thanks for the project promo! It’s so fun writing with you…and especially hearing your voice.

    I said it in our comments, but I’ll say it again here…your poem reminds me SO much of Robert Frost in “Westrunning Brook.”

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