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FEATURED ARTICLES Note: These links are on separate web pages and will exit you from the current edition. Poetry +: Warner Conarton A Good Read: "TigerTale, Volume 2:  Selected Poems 1966-2002" Grammar Rules!: "Who’s Versus Whose" WRITE-NOW: "A Good Poem Deserves A Good Title" On the Web: "Amaze - The Cinquain Journal"

CONTENTS of this page:

• TRIBUTE TO ANOTHER POET
• EDITOR'S CHOICE
• Staff info

FIRST PLACE - Winner of a $20.00 electronic book gift certificate.

Multifaceted Emily Dickinson

Rare day of solitude without the muse she skipped out to enchant the rose and robin. Turning now to Emily, who gives us slant rhyme, images that lean the way the wind blows.  Simple words that dance on the page, notes play on harp and lyre, quietly fall, forming lines of mystery, some of death and his ways:  "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality."  Her four-liners I have learned to treasure, as pure philosophy, of nature, life and love. Now into my room she brings delight, my pen is spilling words like wine. As Emily's anxious quill composes gently still - words in musical methodical time - immemorial.

Jeanette Oestermyer, Roswell, NM, USA

Visiting Matsuo Basho

Climbing this mountain of stressful demands obscures a secret escape from life's chaos.  Hidden in the covers, word-cemented eyes riveted on turning pages, traveling time, lost.  Falling into the past, I discard my Nikes, step into wooden sandals, wiggle my toes, and eat a purple plum on an evening stroll with Basho through the nature of ancient China.  Walking along I fill my writer's knapsack with water's sound, ripe plums, chrysanthemums, wind, a crow, autumn, and the banana tree, just a leaf. Closing the book, I spill nature from my sack - autumn evening...Basho's banana tree leaf... pen without ink - takes flight on crow wings.  Look!  I am still wearing wooden sandals.

Kathy Paupore, Kingsford, MI, USA

Siegfried Sassoon Soars!

What delight it is to take flight with a man like Siegfried Sassoon. He sings and he dances with words, I follow his lead, and I cannot return until I've danced on his feet, sung with his voice, and stretched to reach unimaginable heights. When he speaks of imprisoned birds finding freedom, I want to shout out his name and beg him to take me to that place where I can wing wildly! Oh, it's there, he found it, and I want to find it, too! See how he ignites my mind and gives me desire to write in a way that nothing can stop this inspiring gust that lifts me higher and higher, nothing can dampen my ascent into this limitless sky of white.

Avonne Griffin, Greer, SC, USA

Simply Adelaide Crapsey

Deadlines pursue, followed by word count and line stipulations. Protracted requirements reside over brevity, for length’s sake. Verbose, with nothing said.  Confusion rattles my head with bits of life’s raw purity.  Cinquain lady of prose, shows the beauty to be savored. An eloquent poetess, a Vassar star.  Sweet Adelaide knows which words and where they are. Her voice speaks, Seek not loquacious lies but terse truths. Her creative spontaneity forever remembered on November nights and in moon-cast shadows. Protected by precise denominations. My pages wait, riddled with syllables of twenty-two.

M. E. Wood, Belleville, ON, CAN

Tracking Robert Frost

I trace his path, well worn through seasons of nature and souls of men, to observe through eyes long lidded in death complexities pared to simplicities.  Sight graced by genius, mind waltzing in words, he straightened the maze in masterful stride, easing the journey for those to follow. Keys of wisdom jangle loudly in the shrouded stillness of his wake while I, less traveled, seek passage and pray, forgive me my trespasses, and tread humbly in his trace.

Helen M. David, Simsbury, CT, USA

Ingesting Lewis Carroll

When hungering for liberal helping of muse, I feast on Lewis Carroll, whose genius sole imagined Wonderland ­ magical place where hare holes aren’t as hare holes ought and frumious characters debate in deranged dialects ­ full-rhyming ditties, but never a word said right when referencing the poem from which the parody comes.  So, too, with me ­ not one word write is rightful to my mind … until, long evening spent with Carroll in my lap and come convivial morning I be torn no longer.  Then, and only then, will I write.

SJ Baldock, Lancaster, TX, USA

Plainly, Emily Dickinson

Some say she lived in a narrow world, a dark room with hemmed-in windows looking out on a simple garden. Her life was as plain as her appearance.  And yet, she lived another life, too.  Her poetry is so full of knowledge and beauty it seems to glow - I always imagine her room and her garden flooded with light.   When I regret my own restricted world, I think of her, on her knees, intently pondering the meaning of a caterpillar - I can see the pungent green, the hairy little accordion clumping his way along a garden path.  From such commonplace things, she learned all she needed to "reveal the cosmos."  A caterpillar...what a quaint subject for an inventor of  American poetry.  When I look at her simplicity,  I have hope of waiting butterflies.

Lynne Craig, Terrell, TX, USA

Following Sharon Olds

Summer days, at the end of the hallway, I play quietly. Mommy works at the Library. I read lots of books, color, or play with Colorforms 'til she gets home. I like to play with the little pieces of colored plastic. They're like cartoons. They come with their own stuff that sticks on shiny cardboard backgrounds. Popeye & Olive play on the deck of a ship. In the middle two doors open and there's a small secret cupboard. Each piece has its own space shaped exactly like itself on two black holders for when they're tired of being stuck around here and there. I play real quiet while I wait for Mommy. I can hear Daddy snoring in the bedroom. He works somewhere doing something at night and I'm always very quiet so I don't wake him up and make him angry at me again. Mommy should be coming home soon 'cause I'm getting hungry and my belly is rumbling.

Maryann Hazen Stearns, Ellenville, NY, USA

Hafiz Reverie

Falling in love with a dead Persian poet drives the seat of the soul straight through the heart like a sledged spike:  Fat, hot, piercing, trembling.  Hafiz, you promised a wild lover, but flaccid flesh dissolves before your intensity, your delight, my ecstasy.   Reincarnate and purge this futile longing, constant searching, my insatiable passion for our conjugation.  I dream of caravans and stars.

Monica Rose Martino, Plano, TX, USA

Finding Walt Whitman

I pause my sunrise run at the crest of a hill overlooking the bay, the water there endlessly rocking. I pause for I have dipped my cup in his liquid prose, and wet forever, missing him one place, I find him again in moments like these. I hear his echoes in Chopin and once more in Adrienne, but I return time and time again to Whitman's principled, sensual body, thirsting and suckling for the poet who eternally electrifies and sings his songs for me. Whitman, you are my mentor, my church, my America. We commune in the vast dewy meadows of your expansive lines, your words forever lapping, undulating, rocking my own.

Shannon Riggs, Victoria, BC, CAN

Back to contents

Multifaceted Emily Dickinson

Rare day of solitude without the muse she skipped out to enchant the rose and robin. Turning now to Emily, who gives us slant rhyme, images that lean the way the wind blows.  Simple words that dance on the page, notes play on harp and lyre, quietly fall, forming lines of mystery, some of death and his ways:  "Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality."  Her four-liners I have learned to treasure, as pure philosophy, of nature, life and love. Now into my room she brings delight, my pen is spilling words like wine. As Emily's anxious quill composes gently still - words in musical methodical time - immemorial.

Jeanette Oestermyer, Roswell, NM, USA
COMMENTS:  Lovely definition of slant rhyme as "images that lean the way the wind blows."  The pairing of "rose" and "robin" is different and refreshing, as is the image of the muse "skipping."  Also worth noting are the internal rhyme of "quill" and "still" and the alliteration of the last sentence.
 

There is no immediate prize associated with a poem having been picked as Editor's Choice in a particular month, only the knowledge that our editors picked it over all the other prize winners of that month.  However, all poems chosen for EDITOR'S CHOICE of each month in the year 2003 will be automatically entered in the FAVORITE POEM OF THE YEAR 2003 competition, voted on by Sol Magazine Members at the end of the year.

Questions?  E-mail Mary Margaret Carlisle, Managing Editor: Sol.Editor@prodigy.net
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