My poetry sisters and I tackled an unusual form of poetry this month, in that it's not a specific form. Instead, we did poems "in the style of" someone else. And the someone else we ended up choosing was e.e. cummings. We didn't pick one poem, but each selected a different piece of his work to play with. I chose "maggie and milly and molly and may", a poem about four little girls at the beach, and wrote my own poem about rescue cats.

tortie and tabbie and tubbie and tom
by kelly ramsdell fineman

tortie and tabbie and tubbie and tom
were one-time stray cats (that found a home)

and tortie discovered a nest of yarn
that made her forget that she hadn’t been cozy,and

tabbie befriended a fabric mouse
she carried up and down the house

and tubbie was chased by a horrible thing
which whirred round the room dusting carpets:and

tom found peace napping without cease
curled tight in a ball in the sun on some fleece

For although it’s not bad to be out on one’s own
there’s something quite purrfect having a home

Andi got the idea that we ought to record ourselves reading this month's poems, as if going out on a limb with Cummings's work weren't enough, so here is an audio file of me reading the poem:



Following is the original poem by E.E. Cummings. You can see that I preserved some of the original words (especially the "horrible thing"). If you are a careful reader/scanner, you might also notice that I preserved the precise metre of Cummings's work, as well as trying to mimic the sorts of experiences each of the four characters has in their space.



You can "embiggen" the poem by clicking on it.


I hope you will check out the wonderful work by my poetry sisters:

Laura Purdie Salas, in the style of "Spring is like a perhaps hand"

Tanita Davis, in the style of "the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls"

Andi Jazmon, in the style of "the wind has blown the rain away"

Liz Garton Scanlon, in the style of "i like my body when it is with your"

Tricia Stohr-Hunt, with two companion pieces in the style of "silence"

Sara Lewis Holmes, in the style of "in-Just"

For still more poetry, click on the link below for this week's Poetry Friday roundup.