Would you weigh in on 3 book covers? My Mentors for Rent partner and I are creating an e-book for writers, and we’re weighing three basic cover concepts. You can vote and leave comments (optional) here. We’d love your first impression of which one is the most eye-catching and professional. Thanks!
Wake up your poetry brains with 15 Words or Less (guidelines here)!
Photo: ArildV
I love lighthouses. This one makes me think of:
1. A rocket. And I thought that before I consciously saw the big gun thing there! Apparently, during WWII and the Cold War, this lighthouse was a Swedish military base.
2. A birthday candle.
3. One small remnant of a huge castle.
Here’s my poem first draft!
Birthday Candle
lonely lighthouse
flashes warnings at crashing
years,offers safe harbor to parties
and song–Laura Purdie Salas
Hmm…My poems the last few weeks have been quite puzzling to me. Oh well. What does this picture make YOU think of? Whatever enters your mind, jot a quick 15 words or less poem and share it in the comments! Remember, your poem doesn’t have to describe the actual picture. Feel free to comment on each others’ poems and tell what your favorite part is:>)
James Joyce in Dublin
with Stephen Dedalus
walking the lighthouse parapet
the waves go on and on.
Happy Bloomsday
I confess I had to look up a couple of things here. I love the image this puts in my head of a writer pacing along the rim of a lighthouse, with only his characters for company. What a lovely way to spend a day! Thanks for playing!
This inspires an alternative version of “Little Nanny Etticoat”.
In her white petticoat,
Bright bonnet green,
And cardigan crimson,
Oh so in between.
Clever! I had heard the original before but couldn’t remember it. It’s here: http://www.landofnurseryrhymes.co.uk/htm_riddles/riddle05.htm if anyone is interested. I especially love line 2 of your poem.
promontory barber pole
shaving sea foam with sharp cliffs
spraying briny aftershave
close, smooth sailing
Ha! Love the new meaning of smooth sailing!
ocean of nighttime sky
follow the twinkling lighthouses
sail to distant shores
of distant suns
Love the vastness this makes me feel, and seeing stars as lighthouses–genius. Pure. Genius.
Safe Harbor
Blinking Stony Sentinel
Forged in a Darker Past
Lonely Petrified Soldier
Forever Standing Fast
Nice–I especially like Forged in a Darker Past
Gives it this wonderful medieval feel, momentarily. Great sense of stillness–stony petrified, fast…They all carry that weight of something permanent and immovable.
Retired
Lighthouse
stands idle
dreaming of the days
it was all-night wanderer
**********
When I see a lighthouse, I somehow assume it’s not in use any more but kept around as a relic of past times. Maybe that’s because so many of our local lighthouses have been abandoned.
Oh, love this! It made me think of the song Glory Days, by Bruce Springsteen. Yours is much dreamier than that, but it is that feeling of looking back at our younger days!
(just as a side note to Laura… Now THAT song I know. Ahem. I know it better than I know my own name.)
Love,
uh.. uh.. um… oh uh, Pamela ;>
:>)
BOOTH BAY LIGHTHOUSE
Faded,
chipped,
whistling
an out
of tune
song.
Booth bay
lighthouse
still stands
strong.
(c) Charles Waters 2012 all rights reserved.
I love that it’s an out-of-tune song, Charles. That details gives us so much information about the lighthouse and the mood of the poem.
Lighthouse
jetty of rocks
like an elephant’s trunk,
lighthouse a jewel
on his brow
That elephant’s trunk simile is one of those that I never would have thought of, but when I look at the image, I think, “Of course!” I really love the way you have put a picture of an Indian elephant with its jeweled headgear in my head, all based on a picture of a lighthouse! What a great connection.
Thanks, Laura–I’m glad you see it too! Julie
Someone to Watch Over Me (Just like the Song)
Sinking, like sunsets,
Your shelter sweeps me
inside,
like a soldier,
saving me from myself
-Pamela Ross
Oooooh, listen to all those lovely s sounds. This feels like a torch song–I especially love that opening line–and the closing one. We all need to be saved from ourselves occasionally!
Laura: I love your BIRTHDAY CANDLE. Such a beautiful image and connection of light, standing erect and tall and alone, guarding and warning, illuminated and illuminating in darkness. Light houses make me sad, too. Too proud to surrender, too proud to say “Get me out of here. I don’t want to work alone anymore.” And yet they are resolute, watching sea and sand and sails pass them by. Like birthdays. I always cry around my birthday time. But NOT the day of because superstitious me worries how I feel and what I do ON my birthday sets the tone for the rest of the year. I’ll cry the night before we usher in another year because the last thing I feel like doing is crying 365 days in a row.
Great piece. Your work may puzzle you but that’s a good thing. I see it as a sign of percolation and passion ready to burst through and break free.
-Pamela
Thanks, Pamela. I really struggle with letting the things that don’t make immediate sense come out (even though that’s what I constantly tell kids to do!).
I’ve never heard of the birthday superstition, though I’ve heard of that idea for…Chinese New Year? Something like that. Do you know the song 100 Years, by Five for Fighting. Your message reminds me of it somehow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR-qQcNT_fY It’s one of my all-time favorite songs–all about the beauty of life and how quickly it passes by. I hope it’s not a bad thing that I have a favorite song that makes me cry!
Truth: I’ve heard “100 Years” 100 times but I’ve never listened before. {} Thank you for leading me to the song and making the bold connection between its lyrics and our poetry exchange… And no. The best things in life, the things we carry that mean the most to us, are always the things that bring out the tears. We care. We hurt. We love. We fear. We cry. We write. xoxo
Well I’m always happy to make a new convert to “100 Years.” The lyrics John Ondrasik writes are so fantastic. Another favorite of mine is “Superman.” Here’s part of it. Another melancholy, beautiful, bittersweet one…
I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
I’m just out to find
The better part of me
I’m more than a bird, I’m more than a plane
I’m more than some pretty face beside a train
And it’s not easy to be me
Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I’ll never see
It may sound absurd, but don’t be naive
Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed, but won’t you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream
http://www.lyrics007.com/Five%20For%20Fighting%20Lyrics/Superman%20Lyrics.html
Dotted, scattered.
Here and there.
The shoreline’s stubble.
Lighthouse hair.
Shamelessly borrowing(slash) stealing from Diane’s lines above!
Ha! Shoreline’s stubble–love that!
I love that Cathy saw humor here! I laughed– the last thing I think I would ever do looking at a light house!
Inner Struggle
Upon a stone
I stand alone.
The ships at sea
depend on me.
Resist?
Persist!
I love the long o sound of those first two lines. There’s no other sound/mood combo that fits so perfectly as long o and a melancholy mood.
Yes, yes, Laura. You’re right. Those long “o” sounds remind me of a foghorn, bellowing its warning sound into the night. Dark water. No sight of life anywhere. Horns blaring. And the lighthouse stands alone. Eerie. Depressing!
The sky is the canvass
but how oh how
do I write with you?
Love that! I can’t help thinking of most things as writing utensils, too. In BOOKSPEAK, I have a poem where the empty tree branches in autumn are writing on the sky:>) I like that you’re talking right to the lighthouse/pencil!
That’s a coincidence! I must order that soon
That’s a wow. Talk about the punishing feeling of being blocked and stiff, unable to translate what one feels onto paper!
Whose lips wait
To be painted
By earth’s faithful
Protector?
Lipstick! Love it–I never would have seen that. Maybe it will beautify the clouds:>)
So creative!
Lighthouse
By day
the lighthouse
sleeps, closing
its bright eye
and dreaming
of quiet seas.
–Kate Coombs (Book Aunt)
Ooh, this is beautiful! “closing/its bright eye/” is so perfect. And Lighthouse makes me think of keeper, which reminds me that I just got Secret-Keeper to read. Can’t wait!
I love that Kate reminds us light houses don’t disappear in sunlight. What do they do all day while waiting for their night shift? {}
And please, no one say “They eat bon bons.”
I don’t even know what a bon bon is or tastes like but oh is that a horrible leftover 50s-era disparaging insult to women who work at home whose shift is… 24/7.) {}
wrapped in fog…
lighthouse’s predictability
almost comforting
This one intrigues me, Diane. It’s that word “almost.” It seems like it should definitely be comforting, so now I’m wanting the whole story behind why it’s almost, but not quite, comforting. Tease!
Well, if we’re going to analyze…imagine hiding in a fog…the predictability of the light lets one sneak around. It’s a comfort, but it could also reveal if one is not careful, so it’s all very tenuous.
Of course none of this was in my head when I wrote it!
Isn’t that the beauty of writing? Everyone else but us knows what we mean. {{}}
Hi Pam! Love that comment. I think I’ll post it in my next Poetry Friday KK’s Kwotes, if that’s okay with you, of course.
Aw, really? xoxo Totally cool about being a quotable kwotable. Blushing. {}
You may as well have dropped a bomb by using the word “almost.” It pops out of the poem and turns it on its head. Diane lulls us into the grey, quiet fog and then SMACKS us out to sea, not letting us taste safety or nourishment. A very Tantalus-like aura in so short a poem. Chilling.
Unlike tall,
graceful,
artistic
lighthouses -
I’m short,
wide,
red-headed.
No laughing!
I have a gun.
Laura, I love crashing years. So unexpected.
Thanks–it surprised me, too:>)
HAHAHAHA! This is wonderful – love that surprise ending!
Woot! The outcast lighthouse fights back:>) Quite the unexpected ending!
Love it!
This is crazy good. In a good way!
Thank you all for your kind comments. I might have missed the gun had Laura not mentioned it. The most fun for me is to see what everyone else imagines – added bonus when poets explained their thought process.
Internal Graffiti
Spray of waves
lift and roll
burble to the top
of my aerosoul…
…pffft! shhhh…
Love aerosoul. And now I’m expecting that lighthouse to spray hairspray. Great sound effects at the end…
Burble…nice choice
Who needs a radio imitating sounds of nature? All I have to do is come here and read Renee’s poem over and over. The water is washing over me, whooshing, swooshing, rolling tides.. Such an audible poem.
the lighthouse
waits
like shaving cream on an empty sink
ready to protect us
from danger
Finally. The noble shaving cream gets the respect it deserves:>)
I looked at the photo again and darn it if I didn’t see an old-fashioned jar of shaving cream waiting for someone to write about it. Often invisible but where would we be without the necessities of life to be there for us when we need them? Uncanny how you found this in your poem, Diane!