My
cousin, Eunice Barbara C. Novio, is about to launch a poetry book called Maps
of Dreams and Memories. But before that, let me first lead you to a poem of
Robert Frost (1874-1963). Sometime in 1923, the renowned American poet and
four-time Pulitzer Prize winner wrote Dust of Snow. It was published sometime in
1923 in the Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of poetry called New Hampshire:
Dust of Snow
By: Robert
Frost
The way a crow
Shook down on
me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock
tree
Has given my
heart
A change of
mood
And saved some
part
Of a day I had
rued.
Decades
later, Bob McKenty, a poet born in 1935 and noted for his mastery of light
verse, wrote a parody of said Frost’s masterpiece. Parody is a humorous satirical imitation of a
serious piece of literature such as poem. Here is McKenty’s parody of Frost’s
“Dust of Snow”:
Snow on Frost
By: Bob
McKenty
A wayward crow
Shook down on
him
The dust of
snow
From a hemlock
limb.
Amused (I
recall)
The poet
stopped,
Delighted
that's all
The black bird
dropped.
But
sometimes, a poem is written to show full respect by way of imitating another
poet’s poem. This is called poetry imitation. The following poem appeared in
Atomic Poetry in August 2015 written by my poetess cousin sometime last month:
My Friend, the Shadow
By: Eunice
Barbara C. Novio
I have a
friend, Mother,
sometimes he
sleeps with me,
but oftentimes
stays under the bed
even when you
sweep underneath
he lays there;
a sleeping
shadow.
He has white
eyes
and always
smiles,
but he makes
me happy
because he
does not talk or argue.
We just lie
down together at night,
dreaming of
what lies ahead of us,
when I grow up
and how long
he would be a
shadow.
A
poet by doing response poetry respects the poet s/he imitates because to write
it, one must understand and appreciate the piece s/he imitates so, here’s my
piece:
Her Friend, the Shadow
By Norman A.
Novio
She had a
friend, she told her mother,
A
strange bedfellow sleeping under her bed,
And ever-smiling
and white-eyed shadow.
A friend who
knew by experience
Her loneliness
during sleepless nights
Entering into her
own story of life.
But without nocturnal
sorrows and pain,
She couldn’t accomplish
life’s most lovely things:
Write a book, give
birth to a child or make a friend.
Between them grew
an amazing exchange
Knitting poems
together for years,
As the girl
grew up her shadow-friend remains!
The
poetry book was published just weeks ago by Aquill Relle, an on-line magazine.
I am inviting the followers of this blog site to order it on-line and click THIS to start.
Grab
a copy now, so I can have my porsyento…
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(Photo: aquarelle.com)
