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March 8, 2018

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Holiday, Photography, Poetry, Writing Tips

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Celebrating Women

Sunflower

Here is a cheery sunflower MicroSonnet for International Women’s Day.

So much depends
on having good friends.
Unlike the sunflower,
we women need to build,
bubbling with superpower,
yet yearning to feel fulfilled.
We ponder, paint, plan,
imagine, dream, create,
extend friends a hand
and help them celebrate.
Like the golden sunflower,
we bloom with power.

Notes: Despite the brightness of the photo (taken at Whole Foods while waiting for a blueberry-kale drink) today is gray-skies, white snow and downed tree limbs. We’re fortunate to have power. Half our neighbors don’t. The kids are enjoying their snow day, howling with laughter and planning to celebrate sledding with brownies.

Writing Tips: A MicroSonnet rhymes in twelve lines: couplet, two quatrains, couplet, although #microsonnet on twitter has many form variants. This particular poem is also a bouquet vignette. A vignette is a short, impressionistic piece that sketches a scene or evokes emotion anchored by comparisons to an idea, character, theme, setting or object. Prose vignettes can be under 1,000 words. Vignette poems are as short as they need to be. For my poem, it’s a comparison to a sunflower, thus “bouquet vignette.”

Happy Poetry Friday! Thanks to Michelle H. Barnes at Today’s Little Ditty for hosting. Michelle has collected together strategies for teaching poetry to all ages from personal experience and from generous poet-teacher-friends who shared their techniques. Any one of the ideas would be a good place to start your writing day, even if you are just kick-starting your own writing.

Poetry Friday with kids

 

57 thoughts on “Celebrating Women”

  3. It is good to have friends that shine like flowers. Hope you are fairing well this winter. I’m hoping this Saturday’s snow is the last of this winter… Spring is soooo close.

    Be well, Cheers! Jules
    (Stopped by as I saw you at Libby’s place…I combined a prompt with my word for the day here: Range

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  4. I’m so grateful for my PF friends and that they “extend friends a hand” filled with flowers and poetry. I love your poem and loved learning about MicroSonnets. Sonnets have always eluded me, but I think I’d like to give this a try. Thank you for sharing, Brenda!

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  5. hi there cute Brenda , it is me Ernesto again lol. Listen , i was wondering if you can give me some tips on how to get better my blog website on wordpress as similar as yours , very nice by the way . i hope to hear from you soon. Ernesto

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  7. ooooooh, a microsonnet! and a bouquet vingnette…I love the idea of these! I’ve copied the form tips down and aim to give them a try. Thanks not only for the introduction to them but a gorgeous sample of a bouqet vignette. I love it! And, the grocery store sunflower, sound of kids home on a snow day combined with sledding mess and brownies gives me the best kind of smile. YOu are and awesome woman and mom. Thanks for sharing.

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  9. Liked learning about this form. My favorite lines: “extend friends a hand and help them celebrate” – because it is hard to celebrate alone, and true friendship isn’t jealous! A wonderful reminder – and probably a good poster for a classroom!

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  10. Thanks for the introduction to microsonnet! I, too, have found that supermarket flower sections are great for getting shots in the dead of winter! I once snapped pictures of hot peppers in the produce section of Market Basket!

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    • I love WCW. That poem has entered my fiber, I think. Why white chickens? Maddening until I remember he visited his patients. Were those white chickens essential to their very survival? Did that red wheelbarrow take the eggs for sale? It’s so mysterious and resonate a poem, despite my knowing so little about it. 🙂

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  12. Very well done. Love how you crafted the form. I enjoyed the snapshot of your day. Sledding followed by brownies sounds like a winner for the kids.

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  13. Thanks for your rich blog post Brenda! I love your micro sonnet– a beautiful tribute for women. And I loved these opening and closing lines,
    “So much depends
    on having good friends.

    Like the golden sunflower,
    we bloom with power.”

    Thanks too for the link to Andrew Carnegie’s site, great info on micro poems there. I think I’d enjoy trying one myself.

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    • Hi Michelle, I think a microsonnet is right up your alley. Kat called it a bouquet vignette, which was new to me. I looked that up and updated my post with a definition. She was right. It is a bouquet vignette, which I think is also right up your alley. I may have to explore some of those other micro forms, too. 🙂

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    • Thanks, Michelle. #Microsonnets are popular on twitter, although I only discovered that when I checked to see if anyone else had done a microsonnet. I thought I was making it up at first. Someone else got there first, though, as usual. On twitter, it seems like anything that combines quatrains and couplets is called a “#microsonnet”.

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