Renray follow-up: We have a title!

My fellow renray collaborators and I would like to thank everyone who participated in naming our poem. After much deliberating, we have decided on Karen Bennett Lewis' suggestion of "Blue Ridge Harmonies" as the title for our piece.

Here's a repost with the title. Also we thought it would be fun to allow you to peer inside the mind of the poets. Our thoughts about what inspired our poems follows...

Blue Ridge Harmonies

easing into the day...
a dab of apple butter
on a biscuit              cd

mist settles
into the orchard        ac

yesterday's phantoms
cloister
in morning shadows          snm

loggia
autumn winds take respite        tf

mountain music
grandpa blows into a jug         cd

rocking chair creaks
on the porch's
uneven boards           ac

a spider tats
another row             snm

corn husks tossed
into the campfire
strains of kumbaya     tf

~   ~   ~

Commentary about Blue Ridge Harmonies by the poets:

easing into the day...
a dab of apple butter
on a biscuit   

Curtis Dunlap: My opening poem "easing into the day..." was workshopped with friends. I really have no special reason for choosing that poem to start the renray other than thinking it would be a nice way for us all to "ease" into the spirit of having fun writing a collaborative poem.

mist settles
into the orchard

Aubrie Cox: The phrase "apple butter" really caught my attention in Curtis' hokku. I wanted to continue on that idea as well as the "easing into" part of it, but also wanted to nudge the poem out of the house/kitchen as I imagined this taking. So looking at the idea of "apple butter," I tried to continue the mood and senses while taking everyone into a new direction. Not only is the person in the hokku easing into the day, but also the rest of the world.

yesterday's phantoms
cloister
in morning shadows  

Susan Nelson Myers: My response to Aubrie's first lines were immediate and sensory-loaded. I could both feel and hear the mist settling. Her orchard setting evoked an aroma of loamy soil which I associate with life's riches and fresh beginnings. As always happens when reading poetry, I let Aubrie take me on a trip and found myself in the shadowed corners of that orchard where the earth's scent is strongest - in recesses still damp and unexposed to the new day. To further develop the mystical sense of place, I wrote of phantoms...beings which I imagine cannot survive day's full light...perhaps things best left behind.

loggia
autumn winds take respite

Terri Hale French: In the verse previous to my first one, the word "cloister" really stood out to me, which got me thinking about nuns and monks and abbeys and monasteries. I like the word "loggia." A loggia is a building whose sides are open so the wind is able to sweep through. It is also a room for lounging, so I thought it a good place for the wind to take a break!

mountain music
grandpa blows into a jug

Curtis Dunlap: Terri's "loggia" poem inspired my "mountain music" poem. I wanted to link to her "autumn winds" and bring something auditory in a musical sense to the poem. I also wanted a unique "wind" instrument. I'd originally written "cider jug", which would also link to the the first verse but, after some discussion with my fellow poets, I decided to drop "cider", thinking that it could be implied with just the word "jug". Cider is often made in the "autumn".

rocking chair creaks
on the porch's
uneven boards

Aubrie Cox: While I wouldn't say Curtis is an easy act to follow, he always provides wonderful links to go off of—in both cases I never feel lacking of elements to link. Immediately, I thought of an old man sitting out on the porch of his cabin somewhere in the Appalachia, rocking away and blowing into his cider jug. Since there was no rocking chair, or porch, mentioned before, I really wanted to add it to the picture, while still giving Susan something that could move the renray forward. I also wanted to carry the music just a little further with the creaking of the boards, which is both mundane and rhythmic.

a spider tats
another row 

Susan Nelson Myers: Just the way my mind works...Aubrie's creaky, uneven floor boards sent me to ground again. (I do tend to scratch the underbellies in life. ) I immediately thought of the spider under that floor board, and if it's autumn? that spider's weaving her little heart out to grandpa's jug tune.

corn husks tossed
into the campfire
strains of kumbaya

Terri Hale French: Susan's last verse with the spider tatting another row had me thinking of rows of corn. The entire piece seems set in Autumn, which got me thinking of dried corn husks which are excellent to get a fire going. And what is a campfire without Kumbaya? Yes, my mind works rather curiously!