The Renku Sessions: Ultimate – Week 6
Perhaps the ending verse of a renku (ageku) is the greatest challenge for poets still acclimating themselves to collaborative verse. The temptation to create a “complete” image is hard to resist. All renku verses need to have an open-ended quality but, for the ageku, this is absolutely crucial.
Here are some of the ageku offers that I found most tempting:
a robin’s feather
tucked into its nest
Sean Murphy
from the hilly fields
a spring wind flows
Richard Straw
the dawn chorus
upstages the sun
Millicent Bee
a jar of tadpoles
ride the bus to school
Michael Henry Lee
the unfolding
of butterfly wings
Tracy Davidson
a clutch of robin eggs
about to hatch
Keith Evetts
raising a glass
to the rising fledglings
Laurie Greer
a colt hurtles
its first fence
Andrew Pineo
little beaks
poke over the nest
Lorin Ford
earth smells
enter the house
Anne Fox
gingham table cloth
for Easter dinner
Valerie Green
newborn puppy
with a bright pink nose
Scott Anderson
voices lift
with the spring wind
Diana Ming Jeong
a butterfly launches
from a finger
madeleine kavanagh
Here is my choice for our ageku:
whispering
to the bees…
Belinda Behne
I know that we already have a verse by Belinda Behne. I try to include as many different poets as I can in any of our renku. But with such a short renku and such a large group of very accomplished poets, it was obvious from the start that this would be difficult. In the meantime, Belinda has presented us with an excellent example of how an ageku should function and I find myself unable to pass it up. I hope you will forgive me.
Here is our renku:
Ultimate
ultimate frisbee
the scent of
sunscreen
Victor Ortiz
each tidepool has
its own moon
Orense Nicod
he traces
her collarbone
with a bit of hay
Belinda Behne
a live coal beneath
last night’s ashes
Ralph Matthews
my post box
covered with
cherry blossoms
Lakshmi Iyer
whispering
to the bees…
Belinda Behne
Please check back here for the beginning of another session, to be led by Linda Papanicolaou. Her first post will appear on either July 16th or 23rd.
Thank you, all, for your creative collaborative spirits!
John
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