Walking Poetry
by Scott Wiggerman
L
ike a flash mob, a small crowd with pens and notebooks in hand .gathered at 8 a.m. outside
the lobby of the historic Holland Hotel one morning in July – visitors, but not tourists; poets,
my class. Each July for the past four years, I have led a class of writers at the annual Summer
Writers’ Retreat in Alpine, sponsored by the Writers’ League of Texas and hosted by Sul Ross State
University. My class frequently gets out of the classroom to write – and this was one of those times.
We were about to embark on a walking Petrarchan sonnet exercise, as part of “Working Out Your
Writing Muscles: A One-Week Exercise Program.” This morning we were also going to work out
our other muscles.
The instructions I gave the students – several teachers, a public information officer, a caterer, an
editor, a publisher, several retirees – were to walk eight blocks down Holland Avenue, turn around
and walk back six blocks, ending up at the Bread & Breakfast Bakery Café, where we would recon-
vene for brunch. The catch? As they walked, they were to take notes on the left side of their note-
books on what they saw, heard, touched, smelled, etc. on each block. At the end of each block, they
were to turn something they had added to their notes into a single line of poetry on the right side
of their notebooks. Thus, they would be walking 14 blocks and writing 14 lines of poetry, the stan-
dard number of most sonnets. They would also physically experience the Petrarchan sonnet’s fea-
ture known as the volta, the turn in argument or emotion that occurs after the eighth line (the
octave) as the sonnet moves into the last six lines (the sestet). Since I was more interested in having
them focus on details than on form, I told them that the sonnet form was optional (as well as its
specific meter and rhyme scheme); nonetheless a few brave souls took on the full challenge, such as
Oklahoma poet Dorothy Alexander:
High Desert Town
Alpine Sonnet 1
An old mining town gussies up for tourists,
celebrates its railroad history. Historic Alpine – A Texas Main
Street City, even the tattoo parlor maintains a desert theme. No zon-
ing here;
bars rub elbows with houses, antique shops –
upscale and downhome sharing the street
with agave and sotol to blend it all – railroad
and mountains ubiquitous in the background.
Here on a seamless morning in late July
prickly pear stretches a spiny green hand,
begs alms of strollers with its sharp demand,
and nameless claret blooms seduce the eye.
Cedars of Lebanon rise tall and wry
guarding the Bien Venido Motel, and
daring red sunflowers with bee balm stand
to welcome travelers and turquoise sky.
Beans and squash become landscaping
at the motel, a light-hearted sign reads:
Hippies – Use backdoor. This is a town
where time passes slowly. Mardi Gras
ribbons still cling to the bridge in July.
A century plant displays centennial bloom.
Odd, the low-land pecan tree growing here,
domain of mesquite and dry adversity,
dusty, barren, mountainous, sere
where no one has ever smelled the sea,
and a sidewalk martial arts clay figure
looks more like Cochise than it does Bruce Lee.
– Ann Howells
– Dorothy Alexander
Poet Ann Howells from Carrollton also wrote a son-
net, less formal than Dorothy Alexander’s, but replete
with a volta:
4
Photo by Dana C. Jones
This stretch of Holland Avenue was part of the route of the walking poets.
I had envisioned the 13 of us more or less sticking
together as we walked, but that lasted barely a block, as
what intrigued each one of us varied widely, affecting
our pace. Some of us focused on the “big picture,” like
Graham Oliver, a nonfiction writer who was in the
class, while others zeroed in on specifics, like poet
Christine Wenk-Harrison did with the gas stations
along Holland, written in couplets:
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2012
Holland Street
Holland Street is Main Street in the town of Alpine,
with cars passing and dust rising from the asphalt like steam,
a “for rent” sign sits under a “for sale” sign.
It’s unclear to what either refers – perhaps each other –
and further back sits a parking lot
more cratered and broken than the surface of the moon,
where visitor cars go in the front, regulars go ’round back
and a loaded trailer sits, waiting for some not yet arrived labor.
The persistent beeping of something far-off and industrious grates
through the air,
above towers of metal loom and a sign screams “Danger! High Voltage.”
In Alpine, the main drag does not have reserved seating.
Houses sit next to storage units; the Christian School next to the
Crystal Bar
and a bent man in a cowboy hat stops in the Front Street bookstore,
inquires about an order for his wife, but he’s forgotten the name.
Like pride, the vintage motorcycle sitting on the corner
and the locals whose eyes ask questions but mouths stay shut,
only the dogs speak their minds.
The walls, the flowers, the windows all burst with color
and everything is hand-painted, inconsistent,
same way God made us.
– Graham Oliver
continued on page 26