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www.dinnerpartypoems.blogspot.com part of sotto voce tant mieux worldwide
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contact editor sadi ranson-polizzotti to post your own work to dinnerpartypoems poems should be written at the dinner party as a group poems about the dinner party are also accepted and can be written any time use Comments section to write to spr for guidelines. If you would like to contribute on your own, please ask a friend for a phrase or a word and then write a poem based on that word or phrase and have your friend do the same - both poems, if they meet our criteria, will be published together as you see below.
We welcome newcomers and established and new poets - please submit!
sadi ranson-polizzotti
editor-in-chief
senior editors: mark polizzotti, betsey hartford, owen hartford.
the object & guidelines
Welcome to Dinner Party Poems;
the object: each person submits one word, best if you have at least six words. Two people can play by submitting three words each. you get the idea. when you get really good, move on to Haiku and Sestinas.
and then: each participant must write a poem that uses all six words.
the rules: poems cannot be edited for content. we want red-hot ink. no refinements allowed.
why: because poetry is fun and you can be as subversive and perverse as you wish.
how: if you want, you can submit your own work to dinner party poems by contacting editor sadi ranson-polizzotti through our Comments section.
What You Wanted - based on the phrase from L.V. "lovelier than air"
How to be what you want me to be.
What I wanted to be which is what
I saw in my head, quite likely unlike
anything you saw. In fact, now that
I think of it, I feel certain our visions
are divergent. That what you want
is one who never was me. So dark
and different, a real polar opposite,
it leaves one of us alone, without love,
or without what you offer, what I offer.
I am not what you want. At last, I saw it:
I do not want to be what you want.
I may be some of those things. Certainly
when I am gone, I will be what you want.
Yet now, love, I become what I want.
What I like, who I am, not an approximation
or a thing you may want, some cheap or false
copy that falls short. No. I am saturated - self.
Today a friend writes “Dear, you are lovelier than air.”
and I fall to my knees with such gratitude.
About the Author
Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is editorial director of www.tantmieux.squarespace.com and one of the editors for this site. Like Lee, she despises violence of all kinds.
Crude Painting - "Lovelier Than Air"
The color blue he had used to paint his youth
On sidewalks of cities where friends had stood
He traced them in memory with written words
Like a Basquiat truth where the echoes of lovers had been
He felt the destruction of innocence too young, he thought
So the corner of the canvas he painted red for sin
Words from mother/father, no advice
A mariner at sea without compass or star
These were scenes lifted from a poorly lit film
But the secret whispers of sleep came to him
And he left his painting incomplete
But lastly wrote as a signature to life
“You are lovelier than air,
To breathe you in…
And to exhale you…”
About the Author
Lee Vowell is co-founder/editor of the ejournal Underground Window. He has had poems published in many publications of all kinds, but finds it pompous and elitist to list them in any venue, unless you go to his personal website, of course, www.geocities.com/lee_vowell. There you will find quite disturbing matter, and it may cause you to cancel your internet subscription and sell your computer, for the fear of someone finding out you’d been to his website would cause you great and continuous embarrassment (and maybe the loss of an arm).
Lee is 34 years old, lives in the southern United States, and hates violence, but likes tennis.
about these poems
This poem and the poem What You Wanted by S.R.P. are both based on Lee Vowell's phrase "You are lovelier than air" which was used as the inspiration for the work you see here. - s.r.p.
http://dinnerpartypoems.blogspot.com/2005/02/what-you-wanted-based-on-phrase-from.html
http://dinnerpartypoems.blogspot.com/2005/02/crude-painting-lovelier-than-air.html
latte afternoons
latte afternoons includes poems written from coffeeshops that are local and that are in Europe or even in your own home. The same rules as dinner party poems apply. You can also have two or more people and pick only one word, and write a poem that includes that word. The rest is up to you. You can also write this on your own; just pick any arbitrary word, then write a poem that uses it. Latte afternoons also include the regular six word game and for the more advanced among us, the Sestina and Haiku. For more poems, check www.cabinetist.blogspot.com and www.tantmieux.squarespace.com . Latte Afternoons and Dinner Party Poems are all part of sotto voce world sites, available at www.sottovocce.blogspot.com .
srp
poem stream | sadi ranson-polizzotti
Each stanza is filled: word by word.
Glass half full, half empty.
The promise is implicit. Each
reader bites down on the communion
feel the tablet's words inking
on the tongue as they dissolve
to a trickle of language, a black
line that traverses the heart
in a telephone jangle of sound
it flows with gathering rhyme
fast beneath the roman aqueducts
where I await it’s arrival
Step to the edge and watch
as each word breaks in dark
pools about my ankles.
get your roman eyes off that skirt | by betsey hartford
six word poem exercise: words are, glass, stanza, tablet, telephone, roman, skirt - poets are in this one, betsey hartford, and in "Poem Stream" - sadi ranson-polizzotti
Get your roman eyes off that skirt,
Mister.
Place your stanza
on the tablet.
Take it with a glass of water
And telephone me in the morning
- by betsey hartford, copyright, 2004
Shahnameh Baysunqur
have you seen a doctor | by sadi ranson-polizzotti
(first line given by Betsey Hartford, rest of poem written by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti)
Have you seen a doctor?
Mine has gone missing.
I search in dreams, yet
still I come up empty
she had a diagnosis to give
my sentence, repentance.
I was to have copper wires
taped the blonde silks of my head
I would be hooked to the fuse
box. She would be the death
of me. I know it.
Yet
epileptic, I am so full
of sparks I’d fuel a village.
What thievery of me
how selfish, to seize
at random inteveral.
Have you seen a doctor?
I must not let others
suffer. This gift I have
electric, sparking blue
and bright. They need it
tonight, to read by, to
live by, make love by
to shed the light
on what is life.
have you seen a doctor | by betsey hartford
one line poem. this poem was written by using only the first line. The rest follows from there.
Have you seen a doctor
Treat his patient
With an ax?
Bones give way to sawbones
Searching inner walls
For cracks.
Feeder streams converge
From from distant heights
Of wired glass
While the doctor calls his reader
For a consult
For a mass.
Have you seen a lover
Giving all she has
To live?
Soaking sucking taking
Every droplet
Like a sieve.
Feeder streams converge
From distant realms
Of ice and snow
While her doctor calls her lover
And her lover
Calls his lawyer
And the lawyer
Calls his broker
For the broken,
And the blow.
when i die | six word poem | by sadi ranson-polizzotti
When I Die
- for Michael Ladanyi
I am spinning hot
on your earth.
All sound is muffled.
I am deaf to the questions
of others.
Instead, I dance
my gypsy dervish.
Step two in my own
small frame.
A twisting caduceus,
flush-red ,copper-eyed.
When I die, place
a golden centime
one for each lid
send me back
to the land
that I know.
alone | six word poem | by sadi ranson-polizzotti
Title of poem must be “alone”
The six words each poet must use are:
cigarettes, blanket, violin, clock, cream, doorknob
alone
I have almost nothing.
only these cigarettes,
to wrap me in their smoke
this cream an unguent
I use as second skin,
the violin, tunes I play
to keep the devil away.
The clock face blank.
I see my reflection in the doorknob.
andin bad, but attempted French, a slightly different interpretation
j’ai presque rien
seule ces cigarettes
pour m’environ en leur fumeur broillard
comme une une crème, protectant et doux.
c’est comme une autre peau, plus forte.
le violin, la musique
pour substinance loin le diable
mon visage est blanc comme l’ horloge.
je vois mon reflets a la poignee.
Alone | six word poem | by Betsey Hartford
this poem was written using the six word formula, and was written in under the three minute time-period allowed.
Blanket the clock.
Break out the coffee,
Cream and cigarettes,
And should someone knock,
Lock the doorknob.
I'll play my violin.
You knit a sock.
by betsey hartford
