Note from 2006 Poet Laureate, Deborah Fries:
Welcome back to E-Calliope and congratulations on being moved to write such nice
winter poems. (It’s not so hard to recall how we sense winter, now that real winter is
upon us.)

For those of you who are not sure about what happens to your poems when you submit
them, please visit the E-Calliope Blog at http://joanneleva.blogspot.com

This month we are going to evoke a sensual experience from memory that is attached to
an object.


Musings about how objects evoke sensual memories:
Think about going through an old jewelry box in the attic of your mind, where you find
your mother’s watch. But you don’t stop there. Holding the thing in your hand –
metaphorically – you are transported by memory to an earlier time. You can recall the
way the room smelled, the glint of light off her watch as she fed you soup when you
were sick, the sound of its ticking. Your childhood comes rushing back and washes over
you, but now you are back in the present, and your memory transcends the past and
shapes the moment in the present.

Let’s look at Mark Irwin’s poem, “My Father’s Hats”:

Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
crowns where I would smell his
hair and almost think I was being
held, or climbing a tree, touching
the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent
was that of a clove in the godsome
air, as now, thinking of his fabulous
sleep, I stand on this canyon floor
and watch light slowly close
on water I'm not sure is there.

From Bright Hunger by Mark Irwin.
Copyright ©2004 by Mark Irwin. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. All rights reserved.

Your Muse visits:
We are going to write poems in which you travel back to your childhood and recall a
thing that evokes sensual memories of a person, and of how you felt at the time. Then
you are going to quickly rush forward, into the present, and honor those feelings in the
here and now.


The Muse challenges you:
To avoid being sentimental. Like Mark Irwin, try to attain a transcendent moment.


The Muse Sets a Deadline:
Send your evocative memory poems to Montcopoet@comcast.net by March 1st for
posting on the E-Calliope blog.