Welcome to Poetry Friday! (Wondering what Poetry Friday is? Click here.) I’m so happy you’re here!
Thanks for all your kind wishes last week. My husband is recovering from Covid, and our daughter and I are both still Covid-free (knock wood and praise the masks and gloves). Although I didn’t get to celebrate my new picture book, Line Leads the Way, in any substantial way, I did survive the week. Sometimes that’s enough.
While cleaning out my planner before starting the next one, I discovered a magnipoem from April that I never posted. (Magnipoems were my National Poetry Month project.) Probably because I never really finished it. I couldn’t get it to where I wanted. But, I took another look and came up with this, though I don’t have time to make the graphic for it :>D
Here’s what I was looking at under the magnifier. I love these sweetgum seed balls. I end up picking up a few each fall and putting them on a shelf to enjoy. Here’s the magnipoem, and below it is a bit of its progression.
Sweetgum Seed Ball
sharp wooden thistle,
a delicate bristle
of w i d e open beaks
And here’s my process.
The poem I shared is part of draft 3, which I wrestled with just a couple of weeks ago. In my draft, it was followed by these lines as another stanza:
fall whistles and feeds
their small halls and caves
this summer’s dark graves
But it felt like two totally different moods and parts of two different poems. So I just kept the first three lines.
Thanks for reading! For lots of wonderful poetry, be sure to visit Molly, thoughtful writer and amazing photographer, who’s hosting the joyous Poetry Friday Roundup this week.
12 Responses
Laura, thank you for sharing your process. Wonderful to see your notes. I agree about the two moods of the two stanzas, so I’m glad you kept the first, which is a delightful poem. The w i d e open beaks was such a sweet surprise.
Ooh those dark graves… unexpected! Once I argued with a tree guy to save a sweet gum tree in our yard. He was right — I eventually grew really tired of cleaning all those gumballs from the deck! (But they are super cool.) xo
Your process is a wonderful lesson in word economy. And the image of “wide open beaks” is perfect. Thank you, Laura!
What an interesting object, one that I’ve never seen! I enjoyed seeing your process, brainstorming until the poem reveals itself. I’ve glad you survived the week. 🙂 Yes, that is very good!
I always enjoy reading about your process. I pick up this gumballs as well. I always think I may make a craft with them. I love the rhyme of thistle and bristle and that ending metaphor of birds’ beaks. Stay healthy!
Laura, I’m glad your husband is recovering from Covid, and your daughter and you don’t have it. Thank you for including this magnipoem and your process, which I love to read and learn from. It’s interesting how your mind went in two different directions. I have never seen a sweetgum seed ball before. That was cool, thank you. Love how your process came to wide open beaks, and I like your spacing. Have loads of fun when you are able to celebrate Line Leads the Way.
Wow! The baby beaks!! I fall in love with these three simple lines each time I read it, Laura. Thank you for sharing your process, too. I love learning from you!
Your poem is beaming with texture in words and sounds, and I love these opposites “delicate bristle” together—You packed a lot in a few lines, lovely Laura! Fun to see your process too, and Horton was in there… Glad your husband is doing better, I’ve been there with the gloves and masks. I hope “Line Leads the Way” surprises you and draws lots of viewers/readers in, thanks for all!
First of all, I’m delighted to hear you’re all on the mend or still healthy. But also, I’m delighted to finally know what these fabulous seed balls are. I’ve never seen them around me, but have found them on my travels–Somehow, even though they fascinated me, I never looked them up. Now, I’ll never see them without thinking about clustered bird beaks. Wow! I so love when a poem opens up the world for me to see in a new way. Thanks for that and for sharing your process.
Hooray for your health, wah for the missed book launch, and back to hooray for a bonus magnipoem! Sweetgums are one of my very favorite trees. The star-shaped leaves, the way they change colors like a kaleidoscope in the fall and those seed balls I’ll never look at the same way again, thanks to your poem!
Laura, Thanks for sharing this poem, your inspiration, and progress. I need to do more metacognition by writing things down like you have here. I do a lot in my head and sometimes get lost (where former versions were headed). Do you have a dedicated notebook for this process? I love the sweetgum seed balls, too — found in MN? I’ve never seen them!
Oooh, I like both pieces of the poem, but I agree that they each need to live in their own spaces!! 🙂
I missed Poetry Friday last week and I’m so sorry to hear your husband has Covid! So glad you and your daughter are still Covid-free. I read Line Leads the Way back in May when I got it on NetGalley and left a review there, and also just left my review on Amazon. Congrats on its release, even though you had a crummy release day!