Writing challenge: “Discarded Ideas & Revised Beliefs” by Jeremy Paden

331 Replies
Jeremy Paden

Jeremy Paden, author of Broken Tulips.

Accents is all about serving the community. As such, we challenge you guys to write a poem based on the following prompt by Accents author Jeremy Paden:

The history of science is littered with discarded ideas and revised beliefs. Pick one or many and write a poem, any kind of poem you like so long as a principal metaphor and/or image of the poem is one of these discarded ideas.

For those brave souls among you, go ahead and post your work in the comments below. For those still building up the courage, congratulate your fellow poets on a job well done!

Jeremy Paden published Broken Tulips through Accents in 2013. You can check out Jeremy’s interview with Accents Junior Editor Chris McCurry by clicking here and read all of Jeremy’s submissions for Lexington Poetry Month here.

I also want to congratulate Steven Lindbergh for winning our Communion writing contest last week. He recently submitted a painting and biography in verse, which you can check out on the updated version of that announcement here.

Steven Lindbergh

Jeremy Dae Paden was born in Italy and raised in Central America and the Caribbean. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Emory. His poems have appeared in such places as the Atlanta Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Louisville Review, Naugatuck River Review, pluck! and Rattle, among other journals and anthologies. This is his first published collection of poems. He is an associate professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky and a member of the Affrilachian Poets.

 

331 thoughts on “Writing challenge: “Discarded Ideas & Revised Beliefs” by Jeremy Paden”

  1. Bernard

    Pick A Card, Any Card: They’re All Non-Euclidean

    Rabbits run the riverbank
    popping through abject holes in the weft of space,
    drinking tea and playing word games.
    Arcane events parallel the proofs of Euclid
    dropping straight through Italy revived
    into the lap of Dodgson as he tries to
    row a little British boat through what’s
    become an arbitrarily selected unprovable postulate,
    axiomatic only in the confusion it brings
    to the Queen’s little croquet game and once and future classrooms.

    -Bernie Deville

    Reply ↓
  3. Roger Conner

    Piltdown Man

    Piltdown Man,
    where are you?
    Like me,
    you got lost.
    A misfit
    caught out, tossed
    by history,
    like me.

    You were real
    for awhile,
    like me.
    Now you are gone,
    a stack of
    random bones,
    a creature of the imagination
    like me.

    Roger Conner (“Piltdown Man” as explained by Wikipedia: The Piltdown Man was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous paleo-anthropological hoax ever to have been perpetrated. It is prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years from 1912 to 1953) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.)

    Reply ↓
  4. Steven Lindbergh

    Beechnut Loungers Never Have Been Earthfish Anglers
    By Steven Lindbergh

    With the report published, the theory is dispelled
    What for eons was held as a murky gigging mystery,
    a rodless and reelless myth,
    a folklore impossibility; often remarked with the quip,
    a mere far-fetched fishing wishery
    but all based on oral rivers running under
    Those who spoke of fishing as they sat
    Beneath Beechnut trees always alone and that
    Is what always netted suspicion, suspecting
    Tomfoolery when telling of pulling Earthfish out
    of the earth’s dusty poolery beneath
    but age upon age of individuals claimed
    to have been peacefully reclining
    against the bark, under the shade when
    shifting their weight their hand mysteriously sank in
    the surface down past their wrist, their elbow their lure-like fingers feeling
    tickling pebbles and tendril roots, silty, loamy currents flowing
    they stirred about fingertip trawling
    dust clouds rising obscuring their bobberless cast
    at last a bump nudged their thumb then
    a fin slid along their palm as
    blind and without line or hook the guddling hand
    grabs a grip of some
    thing
    and clenching tight around what is
    not slippery but gritty
    pulls up the earthfish popped out invisible
    but felt just the same squirming, twisting flippity
    if unseen fish have tails to flip then
    they have need to breathe however earthfish breathe
    dust puffs pleading out of what would be gils if seen
    and the teeth if seen were told to be sharp for
    more than one earthfish raconteur told
    of the hold those earthfish teeth got on an ill-placed finger
    God forbid, they warned, don’t hold it up close
    To try and see it better for your nose becomes bait
    it is a favorite earthfish treat some would state
    In passed on accounts and bobbing boat chats
    all thrown back
    The earthfish of legend that the report dismisses
    As a theoretical tale about small fry fishes
    As not one scientist had ever proved
    After sitting back against a Beechnut tree
    and leaned their hand heavy on an elusive spot
    and in their hand went disbelieving and out
    to home they went remembering the sound
    plop
    and the wispy whirl of dirt that puffed up
    when the earthfish they had caught
    was back to the earth dropped.
    so
    the belief now is
    that Beechnut loungers never have been earthfish anglers.

    Reply ↓

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