Day 16 & PPAC: Florence

Today celebrates the daughter of two good friends. Eight years ago we were in Florence all together. I haven’t been back since.

She was seven years old then and our bestia loved her immediately, and vice versa. In today’s blogging memories at the end of this post you can see what a beautiful sculpture of our dog she made a couple of years later. And this was her most creative photo from the moving train at age 7.

Photo: E. M.

First a poem for her and for NaPoWriMo, and the photos will follow.

Prompt 16: “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a curtal sonnet. This is a variation on the classic 14-line sonnet. The curtal sonnet form was developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins. A curtal sonnet has eleven lines, instead of the usual fourteen, and the last line is shorter than the ten that precede it.” 

It just so happened that on this day in 2018, the first year I took part in our poetry month, I also wrote a sonnet. There it is in my first NaPoWriMo memory below, or at least the beginning of it. Click “read on” to read it in full.

My 2019 memory is peculiar too because it was a cento, made with lines from my favourite poems, including some by you. Remember that? 🙂

I never heard of a curtal sonnet before and was confused because in all three examples by Mr. Hopkins the rhyme pattern is slightly different. In any case, I wrote something like it.

Halfway to thirty 

As if it’s April and she poem fifteen, 
halfway to thirty – which itself is nothing –
she’s in her room, alone, and it’s her birthday. 

She tested positive. “Quarantine”, “vaccine” 
are daily words in company of coughing. 
Her father’s book of poems is a wordplay. 

She once requested live dog as a present. 
But then she smartened up, her dad says, laughing. 
Of all these birthdays she will get no replay.
 
No dog, and yet she knows the time most pleasant: 
the book, no doubt, no cliché.

Happy birthday, E., and I wish you back to health soon!

This post is for Marsha and her public art challenge, so let’s go to Florence together and see what all we can see in the streets there artwise. As I said, this was in 2014. No Thursday Doors yet but my eyes and camera knew what was coming. And also – did you know that Florence and Firenze are one and the same?

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  It’s great to park up here and descent through a park.

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  A fishpond in Giardino delle Rose.

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  Several sculptures by Folon were there at the time. I wonder if still.

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  A fountain during the descent.

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  Just a drive-by of a table setting. We didn’t eat here.

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  Must be a church.

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  Not a fan of scribbles but I like the scene.

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  Here I liked the lamp.

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  I could take more photos of street art.

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  This is peculiar.

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  Another fun display. Is that a doctor on the right?

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  Tower of art?

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  One of my favourite photos ever.

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  Florence Cathedral is a thing to behold.

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  We didn’t go in but I don’t think this is the entrance.

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  So many details.

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  Hercules and Cacus by Bandinelli.

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  Perseus and Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini.

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  The author of “The Prince” from 1532.

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  Towards Ponte Vecchio.

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  Not everything is as it seems.

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  Goodbye, Ponte Vecchio. Who knows when I’ll see you again.

For Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC) hosted by Marsha at Always Write

The last day in my NaPoWriMo history

2018: A Sonnet to April Awakening

Today I wish to tell you a true story
of how a poem properly is written.
Not only nature’s wonders truly fit in
but it’s the holiest of all things holy:

A sonnet! As they do it in Great Britain
yet not: behold! This form looks foreign wholly,
befitting more some other nations’ glory.
The bel paese bards were with it smitten.

Read on.

2019: Art likes to make more of itself

There is no point to this poem. (1) 
I would like to walk around
in a small coat of words (2)
through the meadows  
where no grass has ever grown. (3)
I keep forgetting what
a tired country this is. (4)
Worms worm,
seeds sowing. (5) 
(Read the cento in full.) 

2020: Via Larga

I love you, Via Larga.
I love the entire Viterbo around you,
but I love you the most.
You are large by name but really tiny,
rich in colours
but fully unremarkable,
with a door at the end
that made me grin
like a Gypsy at white bread
and feel that I was in the right place
with the right person
who became giddier
and chattier in you too,
Via Larga,
although we had already been in excellent mood. 
(Read on.)

2021: Daily poem 

A daily test.
No time for rest.

- Are you for real?
- I can still feel...

- How are you, woman?
- I am still human.

- Are you sure you’re a poet?
- How would I even know it?

- Why are these words lumped?
- They are ready to be dumped.

This day in my blogging history

• 2014: I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren’t certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying.—George Bird Evans

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  2014: Happy birthday, dear E. This is your Fonzie writing to you.

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  2015: Girl who will get a dog when she is 9. Paws are ready.

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  2016: My favourite artist turns 9. She didn’t get a dog but she made a copy of ours!