A tanka in response - a Poetry Friday post

[kellyrfineman]

Last month, we all wrote sonnets. Well, everyone in the poetry sisters except me wrote curtal sonnets, a form invented (or at least made popular) by Gerard Manley Hopkins. This month, we are each writing a tanka in response to somebody else's sonnet. I have been known to refer to a tanka as "a haiku pulling a trailer", but I've also discussed it far more thoroughly. Here's an introduction to tanka, another post describing the construction of tanka, and one about how the parts of a tanka relate to one another. And for fun, "a little tanka feminism".

Tanita Davis is responding to my sonnet about Kismet, the not-so-mighty huntress, and I am responding to Sara Lewis Holmes's curtal sonnet about Gerard Manley Hopkins, which you can read below:

Hopkins foxed sonnets to 3/4 spare
     wire-whipped stresses til they wailed
         half-tocked feral hymns from sprung clocks

Elbowing joy as birdsong from air,
      priested, pressed hard, he failed
          at 44, a life, curtailed and boxed

Yet, cold-call his poems, and he swells,
      as slugger’s bandied cauliflower ear; rung,
          you clangor, near strangled, on far-hailed
Words; carrion cry unlocked, he wells
                            blood to tongue.

Here is my response to Sara's poem, which is more about my feelings than anything else:

feral bird-song clocks-
imagery drives me cuckoo
cauliflower words
tiny white flower clusters
tasty morsels for the tongue

Here's where you can find the other poems:

Tanita, responding to me

Sara, responding to Liz

Liz, responding to Tricia

Tricia, responding to Laura

Laura, responding to Tanita

The rest of the Poetry Friday posts can be found by clicking the box below: