Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Design

Stourhead in Wiltshire, England, designed by Henry Hoare (1705�1785)

�design is so important because chaos is so hard�? Jules Feiffer

�The evil plan is most harmful to the planner� ? Homer

�If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.� 

� Henry Ford 

Elaine Lemon

Midweek Motif ~ Design

Following up Sumana's color motif from last week, let's tackle design.  

I design midweek motif prompts as collages to stimulate a diversity of responses. Besides writing poetry, I love designing window displays and conferences, websites and embroidery patterns. And I love reading between the lines to discover the intent of another's design.

What do you do by design?

Your Challenge:  Please write a brand new poem about design or about how a specific design succeeds or fails.

Design

BY BILLY COLLINS

I pour a coating of salt on the table

and make a circle in it with my finger.

This is the cycle of life

I say to no one.

This is the wheel of fortune,

the Arctic Circle.

This is the ring of Kerry

and the white rose of Tralee

I say to the ghosts of my family,

the dead fathers,

the aunt who drowned,

my unborn brothers and sisters,

my unborn children.

This is the sun with its glittering spokes

and the bitter moon.

This is the absolute circle of geometry

I say to the crack in the wall,

to the birds who cross the window.

This is the wheel I just invented

to roll through the rest of my life

I say

touching my finger to my tongue.

Billy Collins, �Design� from The Art of Drowning. 

Eve's Design

BY MOIRA LINEHAN

Then there's the Yemeni legend   

of Eve in the Garden knitting   

a pattern on the serpent's back,   

the snake unfinished like the rest   

of creation, the first woman   

thinking to add design, a sheath   

of interlocking diamonds and stripes   

along that sensuous S,   

knitting giving her time to learn   

what's infinitely possible   

with a few stitches, twisting cables,   

hers a plan to mirror the divine   

inner layer that can't be shed   

no matter what it rubs up against.

Source: Poetry (June 2001).

Design

BY ROBERT FROST

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

Like the ingredients of a witches� broth--

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

If design govern in a thing so small.

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?

From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem.

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below, 

and please visit others in the spirit of the Poets United community.

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(Susan's next Midweek Motif ~Joy~ will appear on the first Wednesday in 2016.)

We'll see you in Sunday's Poetry Pantry in a few days.  

Happy Holidays, Poets United!

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Animation

 Midweek Motif ~ Animation

Today is  International Animation Day!

Animation is giving spirit or life.
To animate is an act.

Animation is an art.
Animation for children is a joy.

"Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski 

from Four Charles Bukowski Poems Animated

in Animation, Poetry| May 5th, 2014 )

Your Challenge: Write a new poem that is about animation or about a specific animation or a new poem that is animated or a new poem that would make a great animated film or a new poem that reacts to one of the visual images in this prompt. 

 Hahaha ... lots of choices!

An example of computer animation which is
produced in the "motion capture" technique

There's something about seeing this little inanimate object 
coming to life that's just very exciting.  ~Tim Burton

What do I mean when I say 'suspended animation'? It is the process by which animals de-animate, appear dead and then can wake up again without being harmed. OK, so here is the sort of big idea: If you look out at nature, you find that as you tend to see suspended animation, you tend to see immortality.  ~Mark Roth

Excerpt from 

A Lovers Call XXVII by Kahlil Gibran

. . . . 

Where are you, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping 
From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need? 
Do you know the greatness of my patience? 

Is there any spirit in the air capable of conveying 
To you the breath of this dying youth? Is there any 
Secret communication between angels that will carry to 
You my complaint? 

Where are you, my beautiful star? The obscurity of life 
Has cast me upon its bosom; sorrow has conquered me.
 
Sail your smile into the air; it will reach and enliven me! 
Breathe your fragrance into the air; it will sustain me! 

Where are you, me beloved? 
Oh, how great is Love! 
And how little am I!

(Read the long beginning of this poem HERE at Poetry Soup)

Excerpt from  I Ask You  By Billy Collins

What scene would I want to be enveloped in

more than this one,

an ordinary night at the kitchen table,

floral wallpaper pressing in,

white cabinets full of glass,

the telephone silent,

a pen tilted back in my hand?

. . . . 

So forgive me

if I lower my head now and listen

to the short bass candle as he takes a solo

while my heart

thrums under my shirt--

frog at the edge of a pond--

and my thoughts fly off to a province

made of one enormous sky

and about a million empty branches. 

(Read the rest HERE at Poem Hunter.)

source

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others 

in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be ~ Tranquility)