In the distance is Piestewa Peak. The foreground is typical of the nicely-tended horticulture in the Biltmore district of Phoenix, Arizona, USA. This is a “nice” part of town, and we’re northbound on the west side sidewalk of 24th Street, on a hike to bring the mountain closer.
Just south of the street that is both Glendale Avenue and Lincoln Drive is one of the outposts of Charles Schwab, an investment firm. This outfit has a clientele mostly in the upper socioeconomic strata of the world population, and it entrusts Schwab with the management of its wealth. There are many parking spaces on the Schwab complex, but this Sunday, the New York Stock Exchange being closed, almost none of them are occupied. To the west is a water treatment plant, and to some minds both Schwab and the treatment plant traffic in effluent.
We are quite close to the mountain now. If the range is considered a “rockberg” analogous to the icebergs of the oceans, we are walking above a subterranean chunk of the Rocky Mountains. And it is time to turn back. The climb to the summit requires more energy than we have left.
If our weekly mileage continues to steadily and sensibly increase, some day we will walk from our doorstep to the mountain, climb the mountain, and walk back. It’s a wonderful part of The Great Human Adventure to make a grand plan, follow it, and achieve it.
Jimmie the Dog and Jessica the Woman were the best of companions. Alas, Jimmie crossed the Rainbow Bridge, as they say, leaving Jessica bereft. A short time later Jessica, a stellar poet and my friend for more than twelve years, asked me if I did commissioned artwork, and provided me with some photos of her and Jimmie. I told her it would be an honor to try.
Then about a year and a half went by. I kept making attempts and falling on my face. Every so often I’d let Jessica know I hadn’t forgotten and was still trying.
Today I was able to send her the image of my final draft. She stuck a Love emoji on my image and is graciously allowing me to share it with my One with Clay readers/viewers.
Here are the words:
Jimmie & Jessie
Jaunty as a Rock & Roll DJ Innocent & cuddly as can be Melting hearts & icecream cones some days Making bliss & breezes in the trees In the noise & haste & stale ennui Every Dog & Woman ought be FREE
What sometimes happens when I take on a project like this is I care about it so much that I choke. I overwork the drawing, I overjudge the work in progress, and then I get overwhelmed, tear up my effort, and start over. My advice to anyone who goes through that themselves is Relax, walk around the block, slow down and stop worrying about a result you haven’t got yet. Today I put my worries aside and knew that my heart was in the effort, and trusted the result would reveal the heart. At minimum anyone who sees this page will know that two of Earth’s creatures loved each other deeply.
I’m working on my Magnum Opus THE ACROSTIKON now. Today I’ll do a ground-up demo of how I create an acrostic poem.
The first step is to decide what kind of acrostic to do. The overwhelming majority of acrostics are single acrostics, which means the poem will have all the letters on the left spell something meaningful. The most famous example is Lewis Carroll’s poem to the real-life girl who inspired Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll wrote a lilting account of Alice and at least one sister on a boat, and the first line was “All in the golden afternoon.” The leftmost letters of the lines in the poem spelled Alice Pleasance Liddell, which was Alice’s full name before she married a man named Hargreaves.
Let’s make ours a double acrostic of five lines, and have the leftmost and rightmost letters spell Start Small.
We won’t start with Start because one of the secrets to writing a double acrostic is that the last words of the lines ought to be decided first, since we want them to make a rhyme scheme.
S M A L L
Let’s see. Most plurals end with S. So a close rhyme with S and M end-letters might be Gems and Stem. We can try again if it doesn’t work out.
gemS steM A L L
A nifty way to “cheat” when a line ends with an A is to use A as the de facto first word of the next line, but leave it where it is. So we can turn a couplet into a triplet by de-facto ending line 3 with a word rhyming with Stem, then add period, space, A, thus:
gemS steM diadem. A L L
The last two lines end with L, so they will easily serve as a couplet.
gemS steM diadem. A you’lL jeweL.
Since gems and “diadems” appear earlier, it occurred to me that Jewel would possibly make a good fit, and “you’ll” is a good word to involve the reader.
Now to tackle the “innards.”
S………………….gemS T……………………steM A……………diadem. A R…………………..you’lL T……………………jewel
Let’s do the final couplet first. Then we’ll have three lines to set the tone for it. But remember, Line 4 actually starts at the end of Line 3 with A. Hmmm. “A little something something some and you’ll” is, what do you know, good old Iambic Pentameter. Now turn the Something’s and Some into something else: “A riff of beadwork and a clasp and you’ll” is a line describing jewelry-making, and then the last line is a simple puzzle to solve: “Turn browlines into Settings for a Jewel.” The jewel is the lady wearing the diadem.
So now we have
S………………….gemS T……………………steM A……………diadem. A Riff of beadwork and a clasp and you’lL Turn Browline into Setting for a JeweL
Now we invent a setup. S suggests Sapphire, but Sapphire is trochaic. Luckily Star Sapphire, though not strictly iambic, will work.
“Star Sapphire, most celestial of gemS”
Now continue the sentence with the second line…
“Takes breath away like orchids on a steM”
..and complete the thought on the third line:
“And sparks your work-in-progress diadem. A”
Holy smokes–we are done!!
Star Sapphire, most celestial of gemS Takes breath away like orchids on a steM And sparks your work-in-progress diadem. A Riff of beadwork and a clasp and you’lL Turn Browline into Setting for a JeweL.
Now you try, Friends! My advice is to Start Small. 🙂
NOTE: as it says on the page, this demo first appeared in the Facebook group Poets All Call.
there is a place to stroll in my neighborhood that i think of as the Chicken District simply because chickens abound and stroll like i do. once
a lady was leading a troupe of chicks to safety off the asphalt of Earll Drive and i called from down the street “aha! NOW i know why The Chicken Crossed The Road!” and she laughed and declared herself the Crazy Chicken Lady.
today was another saunter in the District but then in a group of four i saw a specimen with some feathers that were the strawberry blonde described by my poet friend Susan V in her heartstopping poem “Chicken” that was really about her son and the processing of her anxiety and grief about him– a golden hen magically appeared and then disappeared but the reader must decide if the bird was real or manifested by a grieving mother to step down the high voltage of her helplessness in watching her son’s life take its tragic turns.
when i saw that strawberry blonde my friend and her poem magically popped into my suddenly unlulled thoughts and it became not a coincidence but a needed component of life on earth that Tragic and Magic rhyme.
chickens cross roads lay eggs become fricasseed pick out dough in breadpans peck and scratch and look askance and reveal glory and downfall and the bond that shared grief creates.
Afterword: Susan’s poem “Chicken” may be found in her outstanding collection Blame It on the Serpent, available via Amazon.
Last Saturday I put my hands on clay for the first time in forever. And I resumed my Weird Bird series with this “Scorpion Bird,” so named due to the resemblance of the beak to a scorpion’s tail and stinger. I return to PIP Coffee Plus Clay this Wednesday to put final touches on it, and then it will go in the oven. Here’s hoping 2023 will be the year of becoming fully One With Clay again!
The 30th became the 31st And pushed off midnight: baby New Year’s Eve, The last day of a year some thought accurst, But some saw Justice and were unaggrieved.
A Pope died unrepentant of his sins. A naked Emperor let fly his spew And hawked his trading cards in virtual bins A parasite contemptuous of his crew.
A tough broad sailed away at ninety-three. A House Select Committee filed its claims. The Twitter-chaos tweeted far and wee; So many are addicted to such games.
Tonight, a lovely evening with champagne And fireworks . . . and many prayers for rain.
Yesterday I went to Famous Footwear and bought this pair of slip-resistant, relaxed-fit shoes. They are the sort of shoes Food Service employees are required to wear. I have managed to squeak through 2022 without working a single day for anyone but myself. 2023 must and will be different. Since my most recent work experience was a Food Service Industry position, it will be easiest to find new employment there. But my feet enjoy slip-resistant shoes no matter what I’m doing, and it has been raining lately anyway.
My artwork-making space has become less and less suited to its purpose thanks to my lack of organizational sense. I give myself till a minute till midnight New Year’s Eve to make this space comfortably operational. My strategy will be to do an equivalent of an App Uninstall: get everything off this work surface, then judiciously place a minimum of necessary things on it, avoiding the chaos of Clutter. There’s a lovely word for the reversal of Entropy, which is a lovely word for Chaos: Enthalpy. Friends, here’s wishing you a grand and enthalpic New Year.
reaching down for my nightstand sockdrawer i clumsily elbowed a small vessel I’d made years ago over the edge of the nightstand
and it fell and being brittle shattered
but though it will no longer serve to hold keys or coins I as a potter am oddly grateful to get a look at the shattered vessel wall and note with satisfaction if not smugness that the vessel’s wall is both thin and even
and i have many vessels and the ability to make more and so the loss is minimal and perhaps not even a loss but an opportunity to pair this brokenness with an undamaged comrade so that they represent two states of being
I’ve placed them on a sheet from a black-paper sketchpad that with its series of rectangular holes resembling film sprockets symbolizes how cinematic the conversion of a vessel from whole to shards may be
and the title is that fine French phrase “c’est la vie” which translates to “this is life”
I received a real keeper of a holiday card today, which features this artwork from my dear deceased friend Beth Lindberg. It was sent by Beth’s widower Todd. Inside is a message of hope, cheer and remembrance, and includes the fun fact that Todd checks in with me from time to time via my blog, which is this thing you are visiting right this second. There have been tough losses nowadays. What sees us through is the loving, persistent spirit that we share with each other. Todd, my friend, thank you for the love you have for Beth and which you dispense to your friends. I’m honored to be among them.
