#TankaTuesday #Poetry Stars No. 261 | #PhotoPrompt

Posted byColleen M. ChesebroPosted inPrior Years Poetry StarsTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to our weekly poetry stars’ celebration. This week’s challenge was to write our choice of syllabic poem, from the cheat sheet or a syllabic form from the Poetscollective.org using the image below:

The image for this week’s photo prompt is from Pixabay.com, compliments of “Pretty sleepy.”

Many thanks to everyone who joined in below:

1.ladyleemanila 10.Eugenia 19.Kerfe 
2.ben Alexander 11.D. L. Finn 20.Veera 
3.Reena Saxena 12.Gwen Plano 21.Ruth Klein 
4.Harmony Kent 13.anita dawes 22.Selma 
5.Trent McDonald 14.Jude 23.D. Wallace Peach 
6.Eli Britain 15.Colleen Chesebro 24.wildchild47 
7.Eli Britain 16.Balroop Singh 25.Jane Aguiar 
8.Annette Rochelle Aben 17.s. s. 26.The Bag Lady
9.Willow 18.Yvette M Calleiro  

What a stunning week of poetry! Thank you so much for writing poetry with me. It was a blast.

A special thank you to Harmony Kent and her amazing Twitter sharing skills. Thanks to everyone for the tweets and retweets. ❤

Diana Peach picked a brilliant image for us to work with. What I enjoyed most were the many new forms, the Whitney, Wayra, and the Arkquain Swirl.

Check out Kerfe’s Whitney poem called Enchanted Doors.

Veera shares a series of Wayra poems called the Time Keeper.

WildChild47 shares an Arkquain Swirl called Trickster.

Let’s not forget the difficult to pen Diatelle by Jude, called Of Love and Time.

With all of this creativity, it was hard to pick one poem to showcase this week! I went with Selma’s Jabberwocky-inspired poem, Be Selective With Your Time Right Now. She says:

“I wrote something like Lewis Carroll’s (1832-1898) Jabberwocky, which the master organized as follows:

  • seven quatrains,
    each with a regular rhyme scheme 
    (ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL ABAB),
  • three lines of iambic tetrameter,
    and a
  • final line of iambic trimeter
  • I counted each quatrain as 8-8-8-6 syllables”

This is a hard form, yet Selma makes it look effortless with her choice of words. There’s also a story here that goes so well with the image. I agree with her choice to not repeat the first quatrain at the end. In fact, that last quatrain sums up passaging time expertly! Bravo to Selma!

"Be Selective with Your Time Right Now"

With eyes in flames they came to foil  
came whiffling through the gnarly woods 
To quell the house that kept the time
Tick tock, genre du jour 

They gave no care, no thought at all
To who or what might live inside
With swords in hand they marched, left right
Then stood a while and sighed 

A troop of soldiers matched tick tocks
Twenty-one steps back and forward
The rascals moaned, gave one step back
The changing of the guards

"What right have you to shield and hide?"
"The house of clocks, let’s break it down!" 
"We've come from far to kill Old Time."
"You're here to spoil the fun!"

The sentries remained undaunted
The clocks tick tocked undisturbed 
And though the crowd scoffed, and bleated 
none dared to touch the barbs

At length exhaustion took them out
hand grips lossened steel to clover 
and sprawled men on the rocky ground
while steel hands got louder

You cannot still Old Time, my friends
kill instead the robbers of time
Time is not like money to spend 
You'll know there's no next time
***
© 2022 selmamartin.com
All Rights Reserved

This week, I’ve asked Selma to choose the photo or Ekphrastic image for next month’s challenge. Please email your image with credits to me at least a week before the challenge to Colleen@wordcraftpoetry.com. Thanks.

See you tomorrow for the new challenge!

Published by Colleen M. Chesebro

An avid reader, Colleen M. Chesebro rekindled her love of writing poetry after years spent working in the accounting industry. These days, she loves crafting syllabic poetry, flash fiction, and creative fiction and nonfiction. In addition to poetry books, Chesebro’s publishing career includes participation in various anthologies featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. She’s an avid supporter of her writing community on Word Craft Poetry.com by organizing and sponsoring a weekly syllabic poetry challenge, called #TankaTuesday, where participants experiment with traditional and current forms of Japanese and American syllabic poetry. Chesebro is an assistant editor of The Congress of the Rough Writers Flash Fiction Anthology & Gitty Up Press, a micro-press founded by Charli Mills and Carrot Ranch. In January 2022, Colleen founded Unicorn Cats Publishing Services to assist poets and authors in creating eBooks and print books for publication. In addition, she creates affordable book covers for Kindle and print books. Chesebro lives in the house of her dreams in mid-Michigan surrounded by the Great Lakes with her husband and two (unicorn) cats, Chloe & Sophie.

25 thoughts on “#TankaTuesday #Poetry Stars No. 261 | #PhotoPrompt”

  1. Moi? Standing here, shoulder to shoulder with those amazing people? Oh my heart— steady, steady..
    it was so much fun to imitate the form. 8-8-8-6. Thanks for this honor. Speechless.
    Ok, I’ll look for a challenge-worthy photo. Sweet.
    Thanks, Colleen. I bless you xoxo
    I’ll shovel your
    sidewalk ⛄️ 🧹 👏 😂 ❄️

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Well done to everyone who participated – such a chorus of voices and interesting efforts and interpretations!

    And well done Selma – I so enjoyed your entry – and yup, you really made it work for you – and so seemingly effortlessly. Truly a delight!

    Once again, kudos to everyone for their attentions and efforts – photo prompts are always such fun. 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

  13. Aww, what fun this was. Congratulations to everyone indeed. I’m so happy for the honor this week and glad to rub shoulders with each and everyone here. I’ve been having a blast here, and days before completing a whole year of participation here, you’ve made my inner child so happy. I almost, “almost” felt like I did when I didn’t win the spelling-bee. Oh, you heard that right. I never won (on purpose). See, I never wanted to be the last one standing on that stage. haha. Children… Anyway, syllabic poetry lovers, esp. Colleen, Thanks so much. I’ve pocketed all your well wishes. Lovely. xoxo.

    Like

  14. Pingback: Be Selective With Your Time Right Now #TankaTuesday #PhotoPrompt – Selma

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