Tags
2019 April PAD, Catherine Castle, love poems, Musings from a Writer's Brain, Poem a day challenge, poems, Poetry by Catherine Castle, Writer's Digest PAD
This month is Poetry Month, so I thought I’d share a poem or two with you.
I was a poet a long time before I was a fiction writer. Granted, I wrote some pretty awful stuff as a teenager. Consider these stanzas from one of my teenage love poems.
Sandy Shores
© 1969 Catherine Castle
Sandy Shores, where I once walked with him,
Where I had love offered by him.
Sandy shores, where I had my first kiss.
Now his kiss and his love I miss.
Sandy Shores, where the moonlight shone softly,
Where his heart and mine were locked tightly.
Sandy Shores, where I met my first love,
And the moonlight shone down from above.
I didn’t even keep to a set rhyme pattern. Notice the first two lines of the poem end with the same word, something that would be okay in blank verse. As would the erratic meter. But, hey! I was young and expressing my feelings through poetry.
As time progressed, I like to think that my poetry writing skill did too. By 1991 I was experimenting with real blank verse, writing more love poems. As you can see, I was a romantic from the beginning of my writing.
Love Songs
© 1991 Catherine Castle
With fingers touching ivory you play love songs,
caressing notes tenderly, crescendoing.
Held tight in passion’s melody you give
yourself to music’s fire and for a brief while
know harmonic chords, duets with ivory and
Your soul. And when the music stops I cry,
“Encore!” and once again you play love songs.
I counted the poems I’ve written over the years and came up with about 178 from one of my notebooks. It’s hard to know exactly how many I’ve written because they are scattered across three notebooks and a dozen computer files. I have pulled enough poems from my files to create five handmade chapbooks: A Christmas chapbook, a chapbook containing poems about my daughter, an acrostic poem chapbook, a Nature poem chapbook and of course, a love poem chapbook.
My poems cover a variety of poetic forms from rhyming, concrete poems, blank verse, haiku, lunes, sonnets (one of my favorites to write), and acrostic (where the first letter of each sentence, read down creates a word) The subjects I write about include travel poems, where I spew prose about the cons, pros and things I see and feel on our vacations; family; life changing events; gift poems; love; hate; sorrow; death; religion. You name an emotion and I’ve probably written something about it. I’ve also written poems than have ended up being set to music that I’ve composed.
Some of my favorite poems have been written as a response to Writer’s Digest’s PAD (Poem-a –Day) Challenge. A new challenge starts today! The poetry challenge also runs in November.
Here’s one of my PAD poems from the first year I did PAD. This challenge was to write a poem that started with the line The other ________.
The Other Shoe
© 2013 Catherine Castle
The other shoe.
I’m waiting for it to fall
from some nether region of
heaven where fire rains down on
heads burdened with cares and toils.
It always drops—the other shoe—
when things are too good to be true.
If I’d could get the mate, I’d
have a matching pair. Dressy
shoes, Lord, with a three-inch heel.
’Cause I’m sure to need a lift
when the other shoe drops down.
I don’t know about you, but I think poetry is a great way to tighten your fiction prose, challenge your writing skills and your brain. Learning a new poetry form is good for making new brain synapses. I don’t have any statistical proof of that. I just know it challenges me.
What about you? Do you write poetry? If so, join the 2019 April PAD. Even if you don’t do a poem a day, I think you’ll find it fun and interesting.
If you need a break from writing poems pick up Catherine’s multi-award-winning inspirational romantic suspense The Nun and the Narc. Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
The Nun and the Narc
Where novice Sister Margaret Mary goes, trouble follows. When she barges into a drug deal the local Mexican drug lord captures her. To escape she must depend on undercover DEA agent Jed Bond. Jed’s attitude toward her is exasperating, but when she finds herself inexplicable attracted to him he becomes more dangerous than the men who have captured them, because he is making her doubt her decision to take her final vows. Escape back to the nunnery is imperative, but life at the convent, if she can still take her final vows, will never be the same.
Nuns shouldn’t look, talk, act, or kiss like Sister Margaret Mary O’Connor—at least that’s what Jed Bond thinks. She hampers his escape plans with her compulsiveness and compassion and in the process makes Jed question his own beliefs. After years of walling up his emotions in an attempt to become the best agent possible, Sister Margaret is crumbling Jed’s defenses and opening his heart. To lure her away from the church would be unforgivable—to lose her unbearable.
The poems in this post are copyrighted by Catherine Castle. Sharing is encouraged. Plagiarism is not. Please be respectful of the author’s right and give her credit when reposting this blog or poetry.
About the Author:
Multi-award winning author Catherine Castle loves writing fiction and poetry, reading, traveling, singing, theatre, quilting and gardening. She’s a passionate gardener whose garden won a “Best Hillside Garden” award from the local gardening club. She writes sweet and inspirational romances. You can find her award-winning Soul Mate books The Nun and the Narc and A Groom for Mama, on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Catherine Castle 