The Versesmith

  Petals of Haiku: An Anthology'  I am pleased and proud to have four of my haiku included in this volume, along with those of so many talented poets.  It's available now on  Amazon in paperback and Kindle. image: Amazon  My favorite of my four published is below. Thanks to Colleen at Tanka Tuesday for her wonderful near year-long "lessons" on kigo words and phrases.  "Geese returning" is a spring season kigo phrase.  I also owe my high school creative writing teacher, Hildegarde Buckette, a thanks, as she impressed upon her students the need to allude to a season, but not use the season word itself. I've always remembered that lesson. I think she'd be pleased.  we sit inside now wait for return of the geese to begin sowing ©2023 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved  The book and original painting of the cover will be displayed in the  Treasure House of the Rinsenji Temple.   Read more about that in this post by the b...

Poets and Storytellers United Friday Writings #85: First Lines  " For  today’s optional prompt , I invite you to write poetry or prose inspired by a fantastic first line. One that hooked you. One that lingers..."  photo: I’m sitting here where you left me hardly more than a week ago.* A week of year-long days, waiting in this place I broke my heart. I come in hopes that one of these long days I’ll find you sitting here. Waiting for me. Perhaps that’s why I come, to be here first. You’ll see me here and know I never meant for you to stay away although I told you go. I’ll be sitting here,  waiting.  Hope to see you soon.    ©2023 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved * First line of Cold Flat Junction , by Martha Grimes.  It was published five years after Hotel Paradise , the first in the Emma Graham series.  So, five long years have past for the reader, yet for Emma it's only been a little over a week.   ...

Poets and Storytellers United   Friday Writings #82 : Favorite Books "...write poetry or prose which includes  the complete title  of one of your favorite books. And if you’re feeling extra generous, tell me why your chosen title is a favorite." I sit at The End of the Pier gazing off into the distance, to squint past the hazy horizon.   There’s nothing to see; there never has been. The Pier is the End of the world.   I sit at The End of the Pier alone, no one ever sees me here to question why I come.   I watch the sun as it slowly drowns, coloring the sea blood-red   in its death throes.   I sit at The End of the Pier wishing I were sinking with the sun, longing to     step off the pier, to walk on moonbeams as they rise from the sun’s ashes. ©2023 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved The End of the Pier is by Martha Grimes.  If you are familiar with her as the author of the Richa...

  Friday Writings #30 : Beloved Books  There are not many things I love more than books! books in my collection and original to my childhood When We ( I ) Was Very Young my father read to me fairy tales and poetry   of Edward Bear, and what was that “ ther ” that he’d refer.   I longed to hear the further rhymes, of other volumes, other times.   I had to wait, so wait I did. It was not unkind, what he forbid.   At only five, I was too young, for more mature words on his tongue.   At   long last I would declare, my childhood was past, “ Now I Am Six,” at last! ©2022 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved   A true story of two of the most memorable childhood books read to me by my father.   When We Were Very Young , and Now We Are Six , both volumes of poetry by A. A. Milne.   Yes, I did wait until I was six to hear the poems in that book, and it was all the more special being...

The Disappearance is a clerihew, an invented poetry form.  The clerihew was invented by a sixteen year old English student, Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), who, when bored in science class wrote this poem, naming the form after himself. Sir Humphry Davy Was not fond of gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium.  When it was published in 1905 the second line was changed to "Abominated gravy."  Mr. Bentley went on to become a novelist.  The clerihew is a four-line biographical poem  It has the rhyme scheme of AABB  The first line is a full name  Lines 2-4 sum up the person named in line 1, usually in a humorous or satirical manner    Agatha Christie A woman of myst’ry Disappeared for eleven days Publicity, or heartsick malaise?   ©2022 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved