Friday, October 7, 2011

POETRY FRIDAY: Some news, and Jurassic Fish

Today I'm the featured poet at Robyn Hood Black's blog for Poetry Friday, and my poem "Cornered" is published in the astonishing p*tag ebook anthology for teens!

For this week's poem I tried a Welsh verse form called a rhupunt:


Jurassic Fish
By Steven Withrow


My deepest wish:
To catch a fish
That dwarfs a whale.

To hook and reel
By look and feel
A monster’s tail.

But I’m too late
To cast my bait
For bones so strong

And razor sharp.
I’ve only carp
To string along.

I’d settle for
A man o’ war
Or basking shark

If one will break
For pity’s sake
From fathoms dark.



©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

7 comments:

Myra Garces-Bacsal from GatheringBooks said...

Nice.

Takes an enormous amount of patience to fish. The looong wait and the quiet.

Thank you for sharing this poem. Now I know why your blog is named 'crackles of speech' - it does have a crunchy condensed tight feel to it that sparkles and crackles.

I also love the feature of Robyn on you on her site. :)

Author Amok said...

What a fun form, Steven. Thanks for sharing the fishy poem. Seems like this was the week for unusual forms.

Marjorie said...

Thank you for this - I'm going to share it with my son tomorrow (it's past midnight here now) - he will really enjoy the chewiness of the words. I really enjoyed your interview with Robyn - and congratulations on p*tag, which I've just reviewd for Poetry friday over at PaperTigers - it's a wonderful anthology and it's great to have been introduced to your work.

jama said...

This one's a joy to read aloud. Good to memorize and recite while waiting for that nibble . . . :)

Mary Lee said...

I'll set my sights considerably lower -- I'll take any bluegill who is silly enough to think that the fly I cast is food!

Kerry Aradhya said...

What a neat poem! I hadn't heard of this form before, but I like it a lot. You may have inspired me to give it a try sometime. I bet it is a lot harder than you make it look. Thanks for sharing!

Liz Steinglass said...

I enjoyed what you did with the form (or what the form did with you). Your wish is very fun and seems very much what a kid (or kid-like grown-up) would wish. Thanks for sharing.