by
Carole Boston Weatherford
Attic.
Barn.
Cave.
Darkness descends. Eerie.
Fanged, gothic,
hungry insectivores
jet,
and kite,
lunging
for mosquitoes;
millions by the moon.
These “night owls”
prey
‘til quenched,
and return to roost
by sonar.
Takeoff-ready,
upside-down,
vampire wannabes,
exhausted,
yawn.
Zzzzzzz.
©2011 Carole Boston Weatherford. All rights reserved.
Carole Boston Weatherford sure has a way with words and, for that matter, with every letter of the alphabet. Abecedarian poems are a landmine, at least for me, because they never seem to flow or tell the story well or... okay, fine... they never work like this poem works. I love the turns of phrase that make me forget I'm reading a "form" of any sort. I'm just hanging with bats and loving it.
It's Poetry Friday! This week's roundup of poetry-goodness is over at Random Noodling. Head on over and check it out.
Yesterday we learned How to Talk to a Girl courtesy of Laura Purdie Salas. Next up... Heidi Mordhorst with The Playroom Floor Writes a Novel! For more information on 30 Poets/30 Days and how to follow along, please click here.
10 comments:
Hahah! Vampire wannabes. I love that. And the first words of the poem just create the setting so well -- the eerie, enclosed, slightly claustrophobic world of the bat cave. Neat.
Oh, this is gorgeous. I love how she took a form as her framework, but built a poem that is so much more than a list of words/lines starting with certain letters.
Favorite part:
Fanged, gothic,
hungry insectivores
jet,
and kite,
Okay, read it first, skipping over the "Abecedarian" term which I didn't know, thinking: wow, how spare and evocative of mood. What an incredible VOICE this poem has. And loving it. And then I read your commentary, Greg, and it slowly dawned on me what Carole had done in the poem... Attic, Barn, Cave... Holy Guacamole! It's an ABC poem. I'm even MORE impressed! Great stuff - thanks Carole, and thank you Greg!
Namaste,
Lee
Wow, that is lovely. SO evocative. The form really does melt away, which just throws you into awe again when you reread.
A triumph! Thank you, Carole, and thank you, Greg, for sharing!!
I'd never heard of the word abecedarian before--but that's the type of story I told my kids when they were little. Thanks for posting Carole's poem. Enjoyed the mood and the comments!
Way to go, Carole! Interesting poetic form.
Jean Hall
http://www.jeanmatthewhallwords.blogspot.com
Excellent!
This poem has some serious flow to it which is amazing considering the form used. C.B.W. is something else!!!!!
I love seeing how she bends the form ever so slightly so that her poem has better sense and flow. Amateurs (like me) dog the form, but true artists break the rules and get away with it!
I agree with Mary Lee, she breaks the beginning-letter-on-a-new-line rule with style and grace. Perhaps it even brings the abecedarian into its modern form, a Weatherfordian abecedarian.
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