Day 3: Music {National Poetry Month & 30 Day Blog Challenge}

Open yourself up to the subtle music around you.

Gridley’s poem says, “Different musics respond to knocked-on silences” and she describes two – boats and wings. Begin with her quote and describe a list of such musics. Here are a few starters: twigs, keyboards, tambourines, claves, door jambs, ice.

That above is what the prompt from Cuyahoga Library is today for the 30 Days of Poetry Challenge. The poet and poetry is Sarah Gridley's "POETRY MAKES NOTHING HAPPEN." I will be honest and say I have no clue what Gridley's poem is trying to say. And it is written in a way that I don't see how it is a poem- it seems like prose. But this is a challenge, is it not? I am challenged (that's a little joke).

Rather than create my own poem about something I apparently don't quite get, I'll share a poem written by another. I was going to go with a Shakespeare poem but this one caught my eye.

Honky Tonk in Cleveland, OH by Carl Sandburg

It's a jazz affair, drum crashes and coronet razzes.
The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.
The banjo tickles and titters too awful.
The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.
The cartoonists weep in their beer.
Shop riveters talk with their feet
To the feet of floozies under the tables.
A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed snickers:
"I got the blues.
I got the blues.
I got the blues."
And . . . as we said earlier:
The cartoonists weep in their beer.