Friday, September 30, 2016

I Got A Round to It

Oh, back a couple of days ago, I saw Michelle's post about YOU JUST WAIT: A POETRY FRIDAY POWER BOOK by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong and the shape poem prompt.  And I started fiddling about with this round poem.  I wanted to fill it with all sorts of references to round in many of its meanings also.  See how many you can find... though some of it is in the actual meaning of the text, too!  Good luck.  I don't know the answer - just warning you!


Making the Rounds

orbicular eggs
release tadpoles roly-poly polliwogs
 apostrophic black body-heads sporting long tails 
springing slipping from translucent globes of black egginess
glueless globs of jelly attached to discoidal green waterlily pads afloat
tugging the mud hugging the shallow pond’s curves beneath the radiant sun
reflecting and illuminating each concentric ripple single pebbles have created as
they are cast into the green water by a fresh-faced rosy-cheeked young tadpole perched
on the crested banks round after round of rounded stones plunking in the water missing
the mass of eggs that old mother frog with bulbous eyes warily watches from her domical
log singing her riveting resonating rounds of ribbits and croak-its rising skyward till the rock
tosser abruptly stops listens sits and erupts in a rousing round of gleeful applause for the
frog mother’s songs and rising sounds of spring and the rolling in of the next cycle of summery
sun just around the corner though soon enough ‘round that bend in the road will be tossed a
curve ball the fall when all will stall searching for havens of hollows to curl snug as a bug
or far flung warm sun as their space of safety before lacy discs of white spiral circuitously
to the revolving sphere of earth spinning around to springtime and globus frog eggs again 
renewing the cycle of roly-poly polliwogs and tiny tadpoles whose mothers bubble up in
song filling the drops of dew with robust ribbits and croak-its heavenward helicals
of song in the new sky cycling blue to purple hue before it is hushed in
 dark sapphire and the sparkle of overarching pinpointy stars
greets the next round of apostrophic tadpoles
roly-poly polliwogs released from
orbicular eggs


by Donna JT Smith

Okay, Tabatha - I did it!  It's a tongue-twister!

Then - just so you know - The Nancy Drew Anthology is being released tomorrow by the independent publisher Silver Birch Press in Los Angeles!  My poem "The Missing Mother's Message" is included... (yay!) 

Now go enjoy more poetry at Karen Edmisten's blog.  Visit today and all week!

19 comments:

  1. Would love a video of you reading this!

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  2. Well, looky here! Goodonya for taking that (round) ball and running with it, Donna! Great glueless globs, that's a lot of words. You've got me dizzy reading all those round references and imagery... or maybe that's from trying to read it all in one breath! Nicely done. :)

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    1. Yes, it is a "one breath" poem! I wanted it to have a continuous flow of no real beginning, no end - a circle. But circle poems can make you dizzy!

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  3. Wow! Loved hearing you read this big round of words. Can't say I know anyone else who's used orbicular eggs and roly-poly polliwogs in the same poem. :) Great job, Donna!

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    1. I'd wager most people haven't used the word "orbicular"...ever! I know I hadn't used it before! I'm going to try to use it in conversation this week sometime.

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  4. This is fabulous, and you added the reading of it, too! Love "filling the drops of dew with robust ribbits" and really all of it. Making sense with so many defined words must have been a huge challenge! Congrats on your published poem, too!

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    1. Thanks, Linda. Mostly this just flowed out with some "round" words being edited in or out, and line lengths tweaked. Just thinking "round" all the time helped!
      I'm excited to get a copy of the book soon. It is so amazing. I need to get another few poems submitted. Just takes focus and time. I have time.

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  5. Wow! so many ways to describe round...the roundness of the sounds, the roundness of the objects and the roundness of the life cycle. Quite a bit of thought there. Thank you for this. I'm not sure I could rise to the challenge so completely. I'll have to let this resonate with me and see what comes to mind.

    I also received JUST YOU WAIT and am starting to work through it with an eye for some library lessons on writing. So far, I love it! Will definitely keep in touch with all about how lessons go.

    Have a great and round weekend ;)

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    1. I don't think this is actually the way the challenge was issued! But I seem to like to make things difficult. Sometimes that is not the best way...maybe often it is not the best way. But this didn't seem difficult at the time. It pretty much flowed out with a few revisions at the end - which required line length edits then!

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  6. How fluid you were in the reading! Here's my round of applause for all your efforts. :)

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    1. Thanks! My first few recordings were not fluid... "What were you thinking shoving all those multi-syllabic words in there with no punctuation?" "Circuitous" and "helical" tripped me up and made me laugh... but a few more rounds of reading and I conquered them!

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  7. Holy WOW! So much roundness and rolling and "apostrophic pollywog"ness! So. Much. Fun. Must share with students who are enamored of concrete poetry! Thanks for the "live" reading!

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    1. It was fun to write and fun to read! I'd love to hear what your students think!

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  8. Donna, this is amazing! Your poem is perfectly rounded. Congrats on your publication!

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  9. Very round and well-rounded. Lovely to hear you reading it. Love the curve ball, the fall. :-)

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