August Blog Bash, Day 25 - Paula Wanken

Welcome to the Debut
of the August Blog Bash 2012!

I am very much excited and honored to be hosting this new feature series... and it is a great way to end the summer!  This Blog Bash is an impressive talent showcase of poets, artists, and writers/authors from all walks of life.  For each day of this month, one individual will be featured here on this blog, at Origami Lotus Stones, my Twitter (hashtag will be #augblogbash), my Facebook community page, and on my blog page on Writing Our Way Home.  Please be patient while I post on all platforms. 

**Please note that all authors/artists have given me permission to post their work on the following platforms/sites I have just mentioned.  Please do not plagiarize, modify, reproduce, or distribute any work without permission from the original authors/artists.  Thank you!**

If you are interested in participating in this Blog Bash, feel free to check out the details here.

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Today's Feature:  Paula Wanken

This poem is heartbreaking and haunting.  The speaker of the poem (or the author) writes about her emotions in a nautical metaphor.  Like the open seas, there is a large amount of uncertainty in this moment as depicted in the last half of the poem.  I would say that this is an example of a therapeutic poem, when the poet writes a poem as a way to heal from a stressful event such as in this case, a heartbreak (or a break-up from a relationship or even a long-distanced one).  The short, choppy lines in the poem also present a churning of emotions (other than the "choppy seas") visually on the page.  I also love the first line in the poem ("in my marrow"), which does grab the reader's attention.  After reading this poem, I am sure that there are many times in our lives that we do not have that sense of direction.

I am happy to introduce a different poetic short form in this August Blog Bash series called the shadorma.  This is a Spanish six-lined poem with the syllable pattern of 3/5/3/3/7/5.  I am not familiar with how popular this form is in the United States, but I do know that since it was presented on Poetic Asides, it has been acknowledged and experimented.  (I have even experimented with this form myself.)  In "A Moment with Monet," I am assuming that Wanken drew inspiration from a Monet painting in order to write this short poem.  Because it is a short form poem, conciseness is important.  Wanken describes the features of the sea (i.e., the "shimmers" and "blue hues") before adding in the "father, son, and sun"--that is, Wanken goes from the larger picture to something as small as the "father, son, and sun."  I can imagine how the sea dominates most of the Monet painting and how perhaps in the slight center or corner somewhere, there is a father and son in a ship on a journey somewhere.  I love how the "sun" is added in as a companion with the father and son.  Interestingly, this last line cycles back to the first line ("morning light") as if day after day, it is the same vast ocean, the same experience/journey.  I also wonder if this painting also draws from Wanken's personal life as both poems presented today feature nautical elements.

Wonderful (nautical) work, Paula!  Thank you so much for sharing and being one of the contributors!  And many, many thanks for your patience and understanding with what I'm going through now.

(NB:  Text arrangement on MS PowerPoint by Kathy Uyen Nguyen.  Please note that text/graphics will be in this format.)

To check out more of Paula's work, you can click on the following link(s):

Echoes from the Silence (blog)


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