by Deb Scott
This week’s prompt is “aunt,” simply because today is my favorite aunt’s birthday. I call her Aunt B (for Barbara), but she is also known as Babs, Barbie, Sissy, Mom, Mother, Grams, Grandma, Grandmother and Mrs. Linn.
Perhaps you have a favorite aunt (or uncle or cousin). But then, so many families are crazy (fun or lunatic or both) that perhaps your favorite aunt is fictional or imaginary. Maybe your Aunt B (or Bee or Bea) is like Andy and Opie Griffith’s Aunt Bee: a fictional aunt fulfilling a maternal roll.
Do you come from a culture that calls every elder female relative “Auntie” out of respect? Or would you like to cloak yourself with that view and honor someone in your real or imaginary life? Re-create that someone as “Auntie”. Perhaps you have a madcap Auntie Mame alter ego, pounding on the stage door. Let her out.
We won’t be the first poets to write about their aunts. T.S. Eliot had his “Aunt Helen” (1917), Dylan Thomas wrote a critique on poetic style (or was it on snobbery?) to his aunt in “A Letter To My Aunt Discussing The Correct Approach To Modern Poetry” (early 1930s) and Adrienne Rich published “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” (1951). Recently John Terpstra penned “Aunt Lucy,” which begins:
Sweet Aunt Lucy, whom I recall most vividly
from Christmases at home, when she sat
at the corner of our couch, smoking
the cigarettes she smoked only then,
Thinking about an aunt at a family event ought to trigger all sorts of real and imagined events and ideas you can write about this week.
A NaPoWriMo chainpoem
If you’d like, post a line here, and count it as one of your daily poems for the month of April. I’ll assemble your lines and re-post it as a poem Tuesday, April 8. (If you are contributing a line please post only that line — no commentary or links — in one comment, otherwise I will get confused. You can make comments, but be clear it is a comment not a line to be added.
Collaboration ideas (sometimes it’s easier to write about someone else’s family than our own)
- Trade a family photo of your aunt(s) with a fellow poet and write about what you see.
- Trade four to six lines with a fellow poet and replace at least two of your lines with theirs.
- Write a poem about Aunt _____ and take out all the important words. Pass it on to a fellow poet to fill in the blanks.
This week let your mind wander to your parents’ sisters –- or anywhere else –- and come back next week, starting after midnight Monday, to Get Your Poem On.
Terpstra, John. (2007). Aunt Lucy. The Antigonish Review #148, 37-1.
Flowered mesh captures hair floating above sun-glassed eyes
Poem line:
She sneaked the harsh Chinese cigarettes
Read Write Prompt: #21 family matters (Aunts):
Here’s my poem for both prompt # 21 and NaPoWriMo # 2:
Aunt Ada
http://brokeness.blogspot.com/2008/04/napowrimo-2.html
striking the match on the bottom of her shoe
Hi Jimmmaaa,
It’s great you’re here.
Be sure to come back Sunday after midnight and repost your Aunt Ada to the get your post on post we’ll have up for next week’s response to aunt, or any other prompt idea.
That way more folks will see your link.
Oops, sorry. I’m a newbie. I see how it works now…. I will come back at 12:01 Monday morning
poem line:
her cloyingly touch caused my brother to seethe…
deb, I have a photo of my great aunts on halloween – there are ten of them, before the masks, and after. I’ll post them on my blog, and if anyone wants to use them as a basis for an aunt or two, they are welcome. I’ll link here when I get them up, some time tomorrow.
jimmmaaa, no worries. It takes a bit to figure out our system.
Christine, love the idea of your great aunts. I have to go see the photo, just to see it!
[...] limerick and haiku theme is relatives. (Thanks to Read Write Poem’s aunt prompt, which inspired this broader theme including any family member.) First, my [...]
There are Aunt Mables all over the world, and William Stafford wrote about this one.
well no insights on aunts (although i do have an ant night terror poem)
but i did write a new poem today about my son (he is a relative after all and a familiar one!) and i look forward to cleaning it up and posting it for this week’s prompt
in the meantime i’m sticking with spring/nature/trees/go green and posted one by my friend amalio amadueno and one by me!
Here’s a before and after photo of my great aunts and my grandmother, Halloween, 1936. Feel free to use it as an inspiration to go along with the Auntie prompt!
Photo for Auntie Prompt
She changed her name and learned to swim.
Rolled her hips and shimmied at a club on Calle Ocho
Thank you for the prompt. I appreciate being part of this community, though this daily poem challenge is CHALLENGING! My contribution: “I see my aunt . . . ” at http://bethandwriting.blogspot.com/ was hard to write. But, that’s #7 for April.
Poem: Twenty Cats
http://thebadpoetsociety.blogspot.com/2008/04/sixteen-cats.html
PoetMouse: Twenty Cats
This is my first poem using a ReadWritePoem prompt for NaPoWriMo.
Aunt Marigold