Poetry Friday is with Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe
Photo from Flickr: Kelly Colgan Azar
When I was home last weekend with my parents and my sister’s family, we watched a Carolina wren feed a nest of babies inside a flower pot. I posted about this miracle of nature here. ( I even made a short video of the nesting chicks.)
My summer discipline includes writing a poem every day. In the Practice of Poetry, Deborah Digges offers an exercise titled “Evolutions” that can be traced back to Philip Levine. “When you can’t write, try writing about an animal.” This exercise takes some research. Having the internet at my fingertips helped me find information about Carolina wrens.
This exercise came with warnings: “be careful not to sentimentalize, to usurp the animal you have chosen by turning it into a flaccid symbol for human emotions…The animal is itself.” I tend to over-sentimentalize, so I tried to focus on the behaviors of the birds. After some work and a few writing partner critiques, I feel good about this one.
Reflections on the Teche 