POP #3: Of tango and lost poems

Perhaps today's post began when a friend told me of her love of tango, and I remembered a visit to San Telmo, a small neighborhood in Buenos Aires back in 2009, a blissful Sunday afternoon filled with music and tango dancers in the streets.

I had forgotten the poem entirely but remembered the music, the dancing, and the photographs -- and so found this lost poem.

Sunday in San Telmo

She sketches a circle

with the tip of her shoe,
an invitation.
He nods his head,
accepts with a bow.
He presses a button 
on a boom box.

The tinny music of tango
fills the air
to the delight of passersby 
from the neighborhood
and tourists who have come
to San Telmo in Buenos Aires
to see in these dancers
those moments 
we now remember from our youth.

She arches her back;

he twirls her around,

their steps pause

and repeat,

their knees and ankles brush,

an intricate embrace

of precision and passion;

her head thrown back,

the music, the music revolves

a rondo,

and we are lost again

in the moment.

This week’s Poets on the Page prompt, posted on Monday, challenged us to look at a poem that we had abandoned in some way, revise it, and then share it. 

I thought about the poems I had written last year, not remembering even how many or what I might ‘do’ with them. Maybe someday I would put them into a little chapbook, or build them around family history,  a poetry memoir. So I collected them, rewrote some, organized them, and now have a working draft of 46 poems.

This once, this year,
these poems are not lost;
paired with photographs,
organized into a round of seasons,
these little troubadours
shine of this past year’s musings
and sing of light.

Stop by to read what other writers have posted for this week's Poets on the Page.

Or just maybe, watch the tango dancers!

October 9: Tango in San Telmo

She sketches a circle
with the tip of her shoe,
an invitation.
He nods his head,
accepts with a bow.
He presses a button 
on a boom box.
The tinny music of tango
fills the air
to the delight of passersby 
from the neighborhood
and tourists who have come
to San Telmo in Buenos Aires
to see in these dancers
those moments 
we now remember from our youth.

Tango dancers, San Telmo
(Camp 2009)

She arches her back;
he twirls her around,
their steps pause
and repeat,
their knees and ankles brush,
an intricate embrace
of precision and passion;
her head thrown back,
the music, the music revolves
a rondo,
and we are lost again
in the moment.

San Telmo, Buenos (Camp 2009)

Today's prompt from OctPoWriMo asks us to think of music and to write a lyric poem.

Today has been a busy day, with laundry, doctor appointments, and a sweet grandchild, BUT the music and the dancers I remember most clearly -- that is past those early days of rock and roll back in the late 1950s and early 1960s -- is the music I found in San Telmo, an old barrio in Buenos Aires, where I lost my heart to tango.

Read more about the tango on Wikipedia.

Read what others have written, inspired by music at OctPoWriMo.

To see a 21-second snippet from the dancers in San Telmo, click on the video below.

Running late with ROW80 Check-in. . .

I feel a little like Alice down a rat hole. We're hanging out this week with a centenarian, a delightful lady with stories of the 1930s oil fields to share. Internet here works but not with my computer. I'm writing every morning, but then switch to the 'big' computer in the den for internet. So here's my ROW80 check-in:

Sunday's January 28th ROW80 progress this week:

• Writing: Wrote 5 out of 7 days. Finished edits about Deidre through Section 1 for Years of Stone and caught some sequencing issues (logical lapses fixed). Happily wrote new stuff but not the 500 words a day. Reformatted the Word file entirely (copy to WordPad then back to a new Word file) to remove weird spacings. Guess I have worked over this over too many times. Wrote about writing on Weds check-in (but late one day).
• Reading/Craft: Steady progress on Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker. Ordered Peter Maas' workbook on writing a breakout novel. Read about 15 ROW80 colleagues since last Weds. Good stuff all around.
• Marketing/Publishing: Nada. Installed MailChimp on my travel blog at http://bethcamp.blogspot.com  but no 'campaign' yet. I think I'd like to set up some sort of PDF file as a freebie (this is on my travel blog, which by the way is getting double and triple the hits of my writing blog). Gave a copy of The Mermaid Quilt to an inspirational quilter, but that doesn't really count as marketing, though she does live in Connecticut.

ROW80 goals before next Sunday's February 4th check-in:

• Writing: Complete revisions on Section 1, Years of Stone, and begin revisions on Section 2. Complete all revisions by PNWA literary contest (February 22). Write 400 words a day 5 out of 7 days. Draft discussion questions for book club on The Mermaid Quilt. Draft PDF on Africa. Work on PowerPoint slide for presentation on African trip. Sunday ROW80 check-in, write about writing issues.
• Reading/Craft: Prep for Spokane Authors meeting first Thursday of February. Finish Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker. Begin the Maas workbook.
• Marketing/Publishing: Got lots of information and strategies coming in, but I'm having a hard time deciding what would help most. OK I did volunteer to do a guest blog and so I'll write that up, confirm the topic and get it out before next Sunday. Need to read Literary Cafe and this equally nice Historical Fiction blog and post there. Need to post a review of Kate Grenville's The Secret River on GoodReads (which I really did admire for its beautiful writing).

No picture this time, but a 20-second video I took in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of a couple celebrating the tango on a Sunday afternoon in the funky little neighborhood of San Telmo. This is to remind us to dance with joy -- maybe with words -- but so we dance each day.

October 5: Eccentric

Call me sweet, mousy, quiet, unassuming,

rather like a tall librarian who wears glasses

and lurks along the stacks. But know this:

When I am 70, I shall have flame red hair,

wear décolleté with abandon,

stagger into morning on spike heels,

laugh raucously with my gut, drink beer for breakfast,

give perfect strangers poems written on lavender paper.

One morning you will come to my apartment

and find I’ve gone to Buenos Aires

to dance tango in San Telmo on Sundays,

under the leaves of the aurancaria trees.

You’ll caress my fourth published book

and say I knew her once.

But you knew me not at all. 

This video comes from a trip to Buenos where we found tango dancers dancing in the street in San Telmo. The prompt, eccentric, comes from today's OCTPOWRIMO, that eccentric group of writers who will write a poem a day through October.