Michelle Garren Flye's Blog, page 23

National Poetry Month, Day 4, Verse 4

Back to the two lines, four syllables thing. You’d think it would be easier, but I have to consider what’s coming next in this linked format as well as what came before.

Poem and illustration copyright 2022 Michelle Garren-Flye

National Poetry Month, Day 3, Verse 3

My renga continues…

Poem and illustration copyright 2022 Michelle Garren-Flye

National Poetry Month, Day 2, Verse 2

I actually wrote an entire haiku before I remembered verse 2 is only fourteen syllables and two lines… I’m not totally unhappy with the edits.

Poem and Illustration copyright Michelle Garren-Flye 2022

National Poetry Month Renga Day 1, Verse 1

Y’all, snow and ice is harder to draw than you’d think.

Illustration and poem copyright Michelle Garren-Flye 2022

National Poetry Month Starts Tomorrow!

I’ve been debating about how to celebrate National Poetry Month. I always do something on here to make the month special. I’ve written a poem a day. I’ve written and illustrated a haiku every day. This year I want to do something special because this year is special to me. It’s my first year I’ve actually had ambitions for my poetry.

I’ve been studying renga recently. It’s sort of an early form of slam poetry invented in Japan where poets would gather for a renga “party” and try to outdo each other with every verse. Haiku (and we all know I love haiku!) actually grew out of the renga format, which featured alternating verses of 17 and 14 syllables.

So I’ve decided to write a (sort of) renga over the course of April. Renga were normally written in honor of a celebration and, in a way, I’m celebrating a new beginning in my life in April. I think the title of the renga will be “Thawing”. Each verse will be illustrated. I will follow the format of alternating 17 and 14 syllables and at the end, I will (hopefully) have the first thirty pages of my next illustrated poetry book, Hypercreativity.

So join me tomorrow for verse 1. And we’ll see where we go from there.

Hypercreativity (working cover) image copyright Michelle Garren-Flye

Poem for the spring equinox: Stay

The spring equinox actually slipped past me yesterday. I spent a lot of time outside, though, so I guess I celebrated by soaking up some of that spring sunshine.

I’ve felt spring coming for sometime for me. I’m thawing in many different ways. In the process, I wrote a poem that’s sort of a love poem, though it’s written to multiple different people. So not the steamy kind of love poetry. (Sorry, but maybe I’ll write some of that at some point, too.)

Anyway, I wanted to share it here. It’ll probably become part of my next book of illustrated poetry.

Poem and illustration copyright 2022 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Poem: “Young” with two quotes and some philosophy

It’s one of those days when I find myself reflecting on what my life is and what it has been and what I still hope it will be. You know those days. We all have one of those days. Sometimes we eat cake on them.

Plato said, “Old age: A great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold, you may have escaped, not from one master, but from many.”

Lol. Plato can keep that particular sense of calm. I will take the freedom, though. The freedom to experience the passions that I’ve denied myself in order to fit in a bit more.

I’m experimenting with spoken word poetry (I’d love to write a rap, but I’m not musical enough), renga/linked haiku, and I’m returning to rhyming poetry (mostly, though my haiku doesn’t usually) because I like writing it even if it isn’t the current fashion. (Screw the fashion. I love the challenge of writing real, solid poetry with rhymes.)

These are all things that probably would not have happened if my life was what it was a year ago. So, yeah.

And still I can’t seem to forget the way it felt to be young, to know I could change the world, to feel the earth shake beneath my feet, tremble before the force of my youth!

That’s a lot of pressure.

Jonathan Swift said something that feels even more appropriate to my particular stage of life than Plato’s praise of old age. “No wise man ever wished to be younger.”

I’m getting older. I own my years and all that came with them. I do not wish to go back. I would not redo anything that has occurred.

But I’m not finished yet. Let the young have their go at changing the world, but I’m still here.

Poem and illustration copyright 2022 Michelle Garren-Flye

Poem: Hypercreativity by Michelle Garren-Flye

It’s been a beat since my last update. Since then, I’ve spoken to a group of writers about my love of poetry and how it dropped me a rescue line during Covid. And I’ve had an explosion of creativity that has…

…brought me to a screeching halt.

How is that possible? When my brain is firing all its creative cylinders, how is it I can’t seem to create anything?

And it’s not totally true that I’m not creating. I am. I’m writing poetry and drawing and working on a book about my cat and gathering material for the next literary magazine. I’m entering contests and submitting poems (and getting rejected regularly). I’m working on a workshop about haiku/renga and researching poet laureates for a speech I’m giving at the end of April (National Poetry Month). I am creating.

I’m not finishing.

It’s the danger of hypercreative energy. And yet I’m still enjoying this surge because it’s been so long since I’ve felt creative at all. I’ll find a balance. Until then, I will go in as many different directions as I possibly can. All at once.

If I connect the dots and draw the lines right, maybe it’ll look like a star.

Or maybe just a jumble.

Hypercreativity

By Michelle Garren-Flye

No need to inspire

I am hypercreative

Ideas abound

Crowds of ideas

cloud my dreams each night and day

push reality

LOL: A Poem for the lovers

Poem and illustration by Michelle Garren-Flye. Copyright 2022

We don’t live in Dystopia…or Utopia (somebody please ban my books!)

Banned books available right now in my store. Local author books in the background. Guess which one I’m most excited about selling?

There’s a list making the rounds of social media right now of “banned books”. Yeah, it sucks that such a list has to exist. We don’t live in Utopia. But are those books going anywhere? Will you ever have a really difficult time finding a copy of The Catcher in the Rye or The Harry Potter series? Probably not. (Even though J.K. Rowling has managed to piss off just about everyone.)

Why is this?

One simple reason. We may not live in Utopia, but we don’t live in Dystopia, either. Banned books are an effective tool employed by libraries and booksellers. There is no easier way to get your book on the bestseller list than to have it publicly banned. Human nature prompts us to immediately rush out and find out why those books were banned.

There are exceptions to this rule. When six Dr. Seuss books were withdrawn due to “hurtful and wrong” imagery, I had a hard time deciding how to feel about it. The reason for this can be found in And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street: “…a Chinaman who eats with sticks…” You might think that would be harmless, but I knew. I spent a large portion of my childhood with an image of Asian people wearing weird pointy hats and eating noodles with “sticks”. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to appreciate the beauty of Asian culture. And the fun. I’m a big anime and manga fan, and I’m listening to K-Pop right now thanks to my much less culturally insensitive daughter. Someday I hope to visit Japan, South Korea, China and anywhere else that will allow a humble American.

Yes, those Seuss books are mostly off the shelf or on sale on e-Bay for hundreds of dollars. But what happened to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind when our “woke” culture wanted to cancel it? It hit number one on the Amazon bestseller list. You can still find it on Amazon, by the way. And the N-word has not been removed. Same for Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And everybody knows about the success of another “banned” book, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. For the most part, there are no bonfires of these banned books, and even if there are, you can’t burn digital copies and more copies are printed of most of them everyday, anyway.

That’s why when I get requests to feature banned books more prominently in my store, I have to admit I don’t have very many of them. They’re sold out.