Poetry Friday--Dance!

About thirty years ago I took up contra-dancing. Contra-dancing is an American form that developed from English country dance (the partnered lines of dancers that you see in Jane Austen movies). It was great exercise, the live music was exhilarating, the community was welcoming, it was an all-around great way to spend an evening. After a while, though, life intervened, the community became a little gossipy, and the exercise became a bit too much for someone with asthmatic tendencies. I drifted away. Still, I miss dancing.

So today, I want to celebrate dancing, even if it's someone else doing it! And I'll do it through poetry.

It took me a long, long, time to actually complete a golden shovel. If you follow the Poetry Friday blogs, you've found that the golden shovel seems to have become "The Form" of 2017-2018. Everybody's been writing marvelous ones and I'm coming up with uninspired, pedestrian, poems. I tried too hard to write one using a line that was too long. I'm a short form writer, so why was I beating myself up trying to write something using a dozen or more words? Duh! I found this quote by Charles Baudelaire that was short and spoke to me.

Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

I am a big Facebook user and a viewer of innumerable videos of cats and dancing babies. So, is it any wonder that my golden shovel turned out like this?

With the Music

Before anything else comes dancing.
Before talking, before walking, is
a diapered baby jiving. There's poetry
in that wiggling tush with
a rhythm in her bobbing noggin. Her arms
gesticulating. Work it, baby! And,
oh, how she kicks those chubby legs!

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

[Note: if you've read the adult novel The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (a hot title with book groups), the mention of Baudelaire may make you queasy.]

What follows are a few non-golden-shovel, dancing poems from my files.

The first is from January 2011.

Dancing
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. ~ William James

With the music we lift our
feet. Our arms float. Our hands
take on a life of their own. As
the tempo picks up we laugh
for we know what Common
Sense said is true, "You can't
dance with a broken heart."

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

An ekphrastic tanka from November 2012 inspired by "The Peasant Dance" (1568) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Text:

outdoor dance party
the musician plays through
the drunk's rendition--
no party is without
its red-nosed souse

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

The last one was written for Laura Shovan's Sound Poem Project in 2015.

enkele sprongen van een danser
(A Few Jumps a Dancer)

A few whistles a bird.
A few licks a puppy.
Too many whistles a penalty.
Too many licks an assault.


A few jumps a dancer.
A few words a poem.
Too many jumps a diagnosis.
Too many words a rejection.


A few flowers a nosegay.
A few tears a reunion.
Too many flowers a funeral bier.
Too many tears a broken heart.

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Jama's Alphabet Soup will be hosting the Poetry Friday Round-Up for this week. Enjoy the feast!