  Poetry
This week: Switch it up! Edited by: Fyn  
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The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. ~ Elie Wiesel
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
When you're happy you don't always have to be laughing, and when you're sad you don't have to be crying; sometimes it's the opposite. You laugh when you're the most upset. ~ Freddie Highmore
Side-note: Have you ever realized that, from a distance, you can't tell by expression if someone is laughing or crying? ~ Fyn
Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here and get books that will open your eyes, and your ears, and your curiosity, and turn you inside out or outside in. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Wet sands wash up no water, least none to quench a thirst
and once when I had lost a race, my dad said I came in first.
Contrary-wise, when once I won and tried to celebrate,
he said to run the race again, handing me a ten pound weight:
No resting on one's laurels, there was always more to give--
winning, losing, mattered not if I didn't choose to live.
Hang from the tree and watch the ants; their paths are many, no set one:
to reach the finish line depended only on where one has begun.
It took me years to figure out: point A to B was rarely straight,
that destinations matter not, the journey made it worth the wait.
A different word, an altered path--even salt water washes 'way the muck
to thirst instead for what I haven't tried, rely on me and not on luck.
Roll up the hills I come across, walk down backwards the other side;
avoid the simple when complex would serve, look deep, quiet, darkly, wide.
Walk on water once he told me, not in tone gentle or nice.
I spent a year figuring out, wait for winter; walk on ice.
Sunsets are not always ribbons of pink and gold reaching across the horizon. They can be fiery tipped cloud fingers stretching out from nebulous clouds to choke the dying day. Daffodils are not simply yellow trumpets of spring, but golden treasures hiding lethal stings. Too often writers stick with the usual, the mundane, the expected when what they should be trying to do is push boundaries into not next week, but the next dimension.
One way to push oneself as a writer is to run down brambled paths, sneak down dim alleyways and dance across rush-hour intersections. Literally? No. But figuratively, absolutely.
Think about it for a moment. What makes your writing different? Why does your writing stand out in a crowd (think the crowd on New Year's Eve) and cause everyone to hush to listen? How does your writing stand out and be something unique? What makes some writing stellar and others boring as all get out? Approach can be one way. Eschewing the way everyone else sees and giving a new vision. Put a pair of spectacles on your reader (ah..give them spectacular) or put on a pair yourself (not yours) and view that suddenly ultra clear, blurry, muddy, double-visioned (edged?) world.
Be six or seven again. Play. (remember playing, fun for the sake of fun even if it made no sense to anyone else?) Play with words, we purport to be word-smiths, after all. Go after the more unusual meaning of a word; play with connotations rather than denotations.
Do you know about 'sliders'? Not the small hamburgers. In your port. You can put words in and then let others (or yourself) play with just those words and have the sum of the whole say far more than the individual parts.
Last newsletter I listed the words to 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' by Robert Frost.
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
A couple of thoughts here. Short, simple poem, yet full of paradoxes. First green is gold? Leaf a flower? Yes. Truth. But presented in a way that catches the reader by surprise. And yes, some of you knew it only because it was in a scene in The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton where it is recited by Ponyboy to Johnny Cade about the loss of innocence. Johnny, when he is dying tells Ponyboy to 'Stay Gold," to keep that innocence and not to lose it in in his life, as he lives. Implying to live goldenly. As readers, many of us knowing it from one or both references, we bring to it life experiences. And, perhaps, life expectations. The words 'Stay Gold' have been a part of my life. They continue to be. No matter what, got to keep that gold.
The words in the poem are:a, an, but, can, dawn, day, down, early, Eden, first, flower, goes, gold, green, grief, hardest, her, hold, hour, hue, is, leaf, nature, nothing, only, sank, so, stay, subsides, then, to.
Here's what some of you did with the words.
Elfin Dragon-finally published  wrote:
Eden holds her first flower
Then day dawns gold
Nothing can stay nature’s hour
Leaf green hues sank
Green subsides to gold
Eden’s grief is an early day
Hardest down to nature
Only so dawn can hold
But nothing goes easy
To a first flower
Fi  did:
Eden's first hour
dawns a golden day
but her hue goes down:
only grief can stay.
An early leaf sank
then green subsides to gold;
so a flower is nothing
but nature's hardest hold.
Eden! Eden! subsides the golden day:
only nature's hardest grief can stay.
DollarDays is painting said:
HER GRIEF
Dawn cuts her down to nothing
Her grief is hardest then,
Nothing stays,
Nothing to hold,
Nature, her hue so gold.
Only an hour a day,
So then her grief subsides,
A flower,
A green leaf,
Is Eden then her grief?
A dawn so gold, so early,
Her nature holds her down
Her first flower,
Nothing to hold,
Her grief, sank to nothing.
Prosperous Snow celebrating   came up with:
Eden's flower
first goes gold
then subsides to green.
dawn,
her hardest hour,
an early grief.
a leaf
sank down:
can nothing hold?
is nature's hue only day?
but stay
so...
a leaf
first goes green
then subsides to gold.
Isn't it fun seeing the wide variety of poetry, meaning different things all out of the same few words.
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ENTRY TWO
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Steve adding writing to ntbk. writes: Look forward to the results of your latest challenge.
Up above *grin*
Elfin Dragon-finally published says: In "What Does Water Taste Like" you discuss using descriptive words in stories. A while back in an English Composition class I was given a great story exercise. To write a story about a person or thing (could be creature) using all five senses. It must be a descriptive piece. If anyone is curious how this is accomplished you may read.... and perhaps have fun with your own.
Great idea!
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Poetry: April 22, 2015 Issue [#6948]
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