Hello, everyone.
Bernadette Hall was born in Alexandra, New Zealand, in 1945. She went to The University of Otago. She has been published in collections since 1989.
Randall Jarrell died in 1965 at the age of 51. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He was given several American national awards in his lifetime.
A theme from the first poem is duality - different halves of a whole. "The city is an egg carton." How can you write a great line like this in a poem that explores halves?
A theme from the second poem is childhood and old age. In a way, these are halves of a whole, and so a sort of duality. You could pick a specific matching pair like these and write on them.
The structure of the first poem is a 14-line sonnet. Try to write in 14 lines.
The structure of the second poem is slightly longer but makes use of a line break to create a run-on line (enjambement) in its last line. You could experiment with a similar structure.
Six words to attempt to incorporate into your writing from Hall: half, sharp, slips, grey, view, city.
Six words from Jarrell: sleep, life, afternoon, time, last, always.
If you have a copy of The Exercise Book (Manhire, Duncum, Price & Wilkins), please turn to "#40: False Starts" for an additional challenge.
That's all. I hope you are inspired to write today.
Glass Sonnet
by Bernadette Hall
She has lost track and she is his memory.
Everything is half and half, light, dark,
even the individual blades of grass
with their sharp crease. Thumbs locked,
fingers splayed, she plays a hawk's ragged
wings on the wall. She slips the shadow
of the Taizé candle. There is no holding
her. Hunched, rangy, grey maned,
she has made us put her in this small room.
Look at the hills, we say, look at the sky,
the clouds pouring over Flagstaff. But the view
is new and tedious. The city an egg carton.
A tiger has entered through a tiny wound
in her leg. There are chickens to slaughter.
Aging
by Randall Jarrell
I wake, but before I know it it is done,
the day, I sleep. And of days like these the years,
a life are made. I nod, consenting to my life,
but who can live in these quick-passing hours?
I need to find again, to make a life,
a child’s Sunday afternoon, the Pleasure Drive,
where everything went by but time – the Study Hour
spent at a desk with folded hands, in waiting.
In those I could make. Did I not make in them
myself? The Grown One whose time shortens,
breath quickens, heart beats faster, till at last
it catches, skips? Yet those hours that seemed, were endless
were still not long enough to have remade
my childish heart: the heart that must have, always,
to make anything of anything, not time,
not time but –
but alas! eternity.
