Photo courtesy: A group of pink flowers by Micheile Henderson, Unsplash. 

Hello dVerse Poets,

Sanaa here (aka adashofsunny) to rekindle your muse this evening, we are halfway through April National Poetry Writing Month! I hope the journey has been rewarding for you all so far.

Today we will be discussing Maggie Smith, and the colloquial style that masks the artfulness of Smith’s verse, which is highly controlled and structured.

Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of Good Bones, her poem that went viral in 2016. She’s the New York Times bestselling writer of her memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and nationally bestselling books, Keep Moving and Goldenrod.

The distinguished poet, Maggie Smith, is also an editor and teacher. She has received numerous excellence awards including two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and several fellowships.

So, what’s a poem of address, you ask? A poem of address is a poetic form that allows the poet to “speak” to a subject. Most of the time the subject doesn’t talk back because it’s a person who isn’t with the poet, or because the person is no longer living, or because the subject can’t talk back because it is an animal, a place, or a thing so this type of poem is usually in the form of a monologue.

Here are two excerpts from Maggie Smith’s poems:

So many hours between the day 
receding and what we recognize 
as morning, the sun cresting 
like a wave that won’t break 
over us—as if  light were protective, 
as if no hearts were flayed, 
no bodies broken on a day 
like today. 

~ from “How Dark the Beginning 

“Light” is, according to Smith’s 2020 poem, “goodness” in the eyes of the public (and poets, too) she would rather pay attention to the “good dark” that comes before dawn, when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky.

Honey is in the hive, forbidden lantern 
lit on the inside, where it must be dark, 
where it must always be. Honey 
is sweetness and fear. I think 
the bees have learned to embroider, 
to stitch the sky with warnings 
untouched by smoke. 

~ from “Where Honey Comes From 

This poem is worth reading for Smith’s striking metaphor for a beehive as a ‘forbidden candle / blazing on the inside’. The poem combines two of Smith’s reoccurring themes: ‘sweetness and terror’, as the poem puts it. 

“Conversation poems,” are usually in blank-verse style, which means that they have a clear rhythm and meter, but the lines do not rhyme.  This means that they may divide sentences into two or more lines to maintain the rhythm. This creates the appearance of a conversation or monologue that has been inserted into the structure of a poem. 

Photo courtesy: Pink mug on stacked books by Ella Jardim, Unsplash 

For today’s Poetics, I would like you to write in the style of Maggie Smith and incorporate conversational mode of address in your poems. Pour out the first thought, the first thing that comes to mind and let the words take you forward.

If you are new to dVerse and/or Poetics, here’s how to join in: 

• Write a poem in response to the challenge; 
• Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr. Linky below; 
• There you will find links to other poets, and more will join so check back to see more poems; 
• Read and comment on other poets’ work – we all come here to have our poems read; 
• Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog; 
• Comment and participate in our discussion below, if you like. We are a friendly bunch of poets. 
• Have fun. 
• This link will close on Thursday. If you miss it, don’t despair, you can link your poem to OLN.