April 1 is finally here, and with it comes Na/GloPoWriMo. Huzzah!
Our first featured participant is Flipped Serendipity, where the “fun fact” early-bird poem draws attention to something many of us experience when starting a challenge like NaPoWriMo — even if you feel very enthusiastic about the project, it can be hard to push yourself out of your rut and really get writing. But the first step to shaking the rust off your verse is to get something down on the page. And having done these thirty-day-challenges many times, I can say that it does get easier as you go.
Speaking of featured participants, one of the ways we find them is through the comments on each day’s post. Don’t know where to find those? Just click on the title to the day’s post, and it will take you to a new page featuring just that post, and a comment section. Many folks paste links to their daily efforts there, or if they don’t have websites, copy out the poems themselves. The conversation between participants in the comment section is really supportive, and we’re particularly grateful for our “super-commenters,” including Paula, Gloria, Elizabeth, and Romana, who make the effort to engage with other writers, and to cheerlead their work. We couldn’t do this without yu!
Our poetry resource for the day is What Sparks Poetry, a regular feature of Poetry Daily. In each article in the series, a different poet discusses the craft of writing, and provides a prompt.
And here’s our own prompt (optional, as always) for the first day of Na/GloPoWriMo.
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but they never said you can’t try to write a poem based on a book cover — and that’s your challenge for today! Take a look through Public Domain Review’s article on “The Art of Book Covers.” Some of the featured covers are beautiful. Some are distressing. Some are just plain weird (I’m looking at you, “Mr Sweet Potatoes”). With any luck, one or more of these will catch your fancy, and open your mind to some poetic insights.
Happy writing!
Escapril prompt: "Vision of the Future."
The early bird Napowrimo prompt from 3/31: Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that plays with the idea of a “fun fact.” Your fact could actually be fun – or the whole point could be that it’s not fun. Maybe you have a favorite wacky fact already, but if not, Mental Floss’s “Amazing Fact Generator” is here to help!
Okay I'm cheating here because I want to see how this platform works and I also plan to spend the entire day on my taxes so that I can get them done and play more fully in the weeks ahead. This is a piece I wrote using the *spines* of books.
ReplyDeleteYOUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH READING LIST IN CENTO
JUST US, we say, PUNCHING THE AIR
HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES, taste
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS, and yet,
we have THE BLOOD OF EMMETT TILL
on our hands; WHITE FRAGILITY runs deep.
BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME? There are no
DREAMS FROM MY FATHER. WHEN THEY CALL YOU
A TERRORIST you are BORN A CRIME. CASTE. It began
with THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. You were never
A CITIZEN. PLEASE, at least try to learn HOW TO BE
AN ANTIRACIST. Recognize THE HATE YOU GIVE,
Imagine what it means to conjure BLACK GIRL MAGIC.
Signed,
THE SOBBING SCHOOL
Oh! Love how it's a book list and poem in one. Made me think of a pneumonic device for remembering lists... string them all together and make a story out of them.
DeleteOnly your "cheating" could be this good. I love it!
DeleteI remember this when you shared it before, and it still has the same impact. Also, I love Ta Na-Heisi Coates! Such a fan of his work, his voice, and his writing.
DeleteGuh! It still hits hard. Especially the signatory. Phew. Also, you have reminded me that I really need to start paying attention to my taxes, so thank you! (which I say earnestly, while cringing)
DeleteI love this one! Have the prompt saved to try on a rainy day - maybe I'll tackle my TBR pile...
DeleteSuch a powerful piece! I agree with Amanda - the signature is heartbreaking.
DeleteIs this the correct place to post @Amanda? For some reason I can't respond to the other thread. It's asking me to sign in with Google, which I did successfully a few minutes ago. Maybe it's because I updated my email address. Will see if I can turn it back. ;-)
ReplyDeleteYep! You've got it exactly right.
DeleteMY GARDEN IN SPRING
ReplyDeleteis overrun with weeds. We haven’t mowed in seven months and
the grass is up to my nipples.
My nine-year-old notices and one day says “How cool!”
as she runs outside to hide in the waving spindrels.
The pink sphynx moth notices and visits me
nightly, as if to say, “How cool!” Her presence permission
not to care about what the neighbors think when they look over the fence
and see my soft body/shape/imprint laying in the grass but to remember
all the reasons I plant myself in the soil. To fertilize
this garden blooming with varieties that don’t thrive
in the prairies and plateaus of central texas.
Night blooming jasmine and phlox, tuberose and cereus. These bloom
under my closed eyes and who has time to mow when tending to this?
Who has time to mow when spring opens me?
Who has time to mow when the pollinators are out
gathering nectar from deep within my pink body?
I love this piece, Catherine! From the slant rhyme in nipples/spindrels and pink/sphynx to the beautiful anaphora in Who has time? Lovely.
DeleteThis is such a gorgeous piece. I love - Who has time to mow when spring opens me?
DeleteLove 'gathering nectar from deep within my pink body' so much, Catherine. Also, I love Sue Ann's observation about the sound play between 'spindrels and nipples'. It has a buzzing, heightened quality, which brings the pollinators to life in the poem.
Delete"to remember all the reasons I plant myself in the soil" <3 <3 <3 Also love the "when spring opens me" line and also noticing the internal rhymes of mow/opens and deep/pink.
DeleteI also have to commend you on how thoroughly this transported me without activating the very deep allergy memories I associate with being home in central Texas!
"all the reasons I plant myself in the soil" YES. I was out digging, REALLY digging, in the garden today for the first time this year & this is exactly the feeling.
DeleteI love "her presence permission/ not to care what the neighbors think" The beauty of this whole piece is wonderful!
DeleteThank you for creating this space, Amanda! I hope it will keep me accountable to one poem per day (messy or not).
ReplyDeleteMy first poem was from the @letsescapril prompt: Vision of the Future
The Future
Your eyes sparkle
as I tell you the legend of The Great Salt Lake
And we walk side by side in the dust
until oxygen runs low
The storms are quiet today
and it feels like a memory of being still
Underground, I open our packets of feast
Uncork a wine from the time before
grapes shriveled on their vines
Our liquid tree glows algae-green
And I imagine the sun through a canopy of leaves
For you I light a beeswax candle,
now more precious than gold
(the bees were the first to go)
I kiss you softly on the dimple of your cheek,
weave my fingers into your waiting hand
Together in silence we stare at the ocean
A faded poster that says
Wish You Were Here
(the bees were the first to go) —the whole piece, so powerful.
Delete'Our liquid tree glows algae-green' is such a powerful image...like absinthe in a small glass, or a vial of some mysterious liquid...love it!
DeleteGosh, Marisa, I got so caught up in the beautiful language and sounds that it wasn't until my second read that I caught how dystopian this is! It's completely gorgeous and you've created a full soundscape of internal rhymes and assonance/consonance. "tree glows algae green" with the G and E sounds. "than gold"/"to go." and so many more. The idea of walking in the dust "until oxygen runs low" really hit me, as did staring at the ocean in a poster saying "wish you were here." There is such a sense of nostalgia that overwhelms the landscape being presented and makes it seem more ephemeral than the past.
DeleteI agree with Amanda, this is deceptively beautiful & incredibly haunting. I loved "packets of feast" for this same contradiction: how can a feast be contained in a packet? So powerful.
DeleteEchoing what everyone has said - you've created such a beautiful landscape, but the dark side of it creates an ache. Powerful last line!
DeleteI was reading a NYT about the latest DNA evidence done on Beethoven's hair and came up with this. It's hot off the presses and may need to cool its heels before I fiddle with form/line breaks. So excited to kick off April with poem-palooza!!
ReplyDeleteDNA
The locket your great-great
grandmother kept close
to her heart did not,
in fact, hold
Beethoven's hair. Everyone
in your family raised
on this myth, warming
their hands
by the lamp-
light of its promise. Relief
is all you feel. Proof now
that your love affair
with the piano was
all a ruse.
Ha!!! That ending! So unexpected and delightful.
DeleteThe ending! Adore. & for what it's worth - I think you've got great line breaks here already
DeleteI really love this and the ending is perfection. I agree with Kristina that the line breaks are already so good.
DeleteMy goodness! I love this piece. The ending is so good and unexpected, but feels absolutely honest. Relief from the weight of family myth. Love!!
DeleteWish I could share the book cover the title was taken from--alas!
ReplyDelete"How to Swim"
Before you can learn to swim,
you must first learn to float
which is to say
you must let the oxygen
seep out of your fear, close your eyes,
and feel the water become
a vessel that contains you, let go
of tension and fight until you are
body, buoy, a floating thing
accepting water’s authority.
The one thing that makes swimming
hard is that we must be horizontal
to do it, and though backstroke
is perfectly fine, it’s hard to get very far
with your eyes on the sky.
We are mostly water. Still,
we cannot breathe it
and so must take care not
to gasp, inhale, take in the
part of the molecule
that can drown us.
If we can learn the pacing
and trick of cooperating lungs,
then nothing is more peaceful.
Like swimming in mother’s womb,
bathwater, a gentle rocking
sensation that takes over our limbs
until we are just another being
in the vast expanse of ocean.
See? There in the waves –
barely a ripple.
"it’s hard to get very far
Deletewith your eyes on the sky."
Love that and the ending ... There in the waves –
barely a ripple. BEAUTIFUL.
"let go
Deleteof tension and fight until you are
body, buoy, a floating thing
accepting water’s authority."
Gorgeous, Amanda. I love how the poem feels like being surrounded by deep water. I flashed on my own body, deep in the river on a summer day, pulled by the current.
Loved "body, buoy, a floating thing" & "We are mostly water. Still/ we cannot breathe it" (amazing line break!) It even LOOKS a little like waves on the page!
DeleteBeautiful! Love the line "its hard to get far/ with your eyes on the sky." The language of the whole piece feels so gentle, guiding the reader to the acceptance of the final stanza.
DeleteThank you so much, friends, for your kind words. <3
DeleteThere are so many beatiful moments in this piece. I LOVE "let the oxygen
Deleteseep out of your fear" and "accepting water’s authority."
Using the early bird "fun fact" prompt:
ReplyDeleteCalled “sparrow grass” by a careless ear,
its flowers are sometimes hermaphroditic
which means they can be both a mother
& a son. All asparagus wants to do is be
alive (twenty years; more) & yet
mother & son disagree on how.
Send them up on a root, the son says;
the mother: afar on a seed.
The gardener considers her crop, perplexed.
It seemed like the right place to grow a life,
at the time. She chose it carefully, the way
women are told to do all things. But now -
Everything she reads tells her that transplanting
will be difficult. Possible,
but hardly recommended.
Delightful read, @Kristina! THIS: "She chose it carefully, the way
Deletewomen are told to do all things." ;-)
Damn. As always, complex and layered, Kristina. Henceforth, asparagus will be called 'sparrow grass' when I see it at the market. Also, it's just about aspargus season here, one of my favorite perks of spring. I gorge myself on the tender spires!
DeleteOof! That ending is a gut punch. It is a great use of that very open, rather than buttoned-up ending.
Delete@Kristina "It seemed like the right place to grow a life, / at the time." Man that line really got me. I also love the play happening here between mother and son especially because the son wants to be rooted and the mother wants to go far afield: such an unexpected but rich exploration and anthropomorphism. This granting of humanity to the asparagus also deepens the difficulty the gardener is having in deciding whether to uproot them. The gardener as mother. <3
DeleteThis reminds me of something I read just the other day by Elissa Altman I think about how almost twenty years have passed since they moved into their house and they still haven't planted asparagus because it would take years to become established and produce (which is also why I haven't done the same).
Oh Kristina, this took my breath away. So many layers here and I love "sparrow grass."
DeleteA very short piece (haikuish) for the first day. I chose to use the "book title" prompt.
ReplyDeleteThe Heroine's Journey
Sometimes nothing more
than the path from table
to crib, hands emptied, heart full
I have a soft spot for anything haikuish and this one creates such an impact in the smallest space.
DeleteI couldn't load the whole prompt while traveling, so I thought it was a "fun fact", when in fact that was not the prompt. Oh, well. Wrote against it anyways.
ReplyDeleteAthazagoraphobia
Is the fear of being forgotten. Left behind, left alone, left for dead. Lost in the shuffle, lost to time, lost to follow-up. Once, when my parents were shopping for appliances at Sears, I climbed into the drum of a clothes dryer because I liked the quiet, shiny, dark. For a long time, I listened to husbands and wives arguing about refrigerators and dishwashers. I could not escape the fighting even in my cocoon. Once I realized no one was coming for me, I was more relieved than scared; I fell asleep. I heard my name being called, but I could not answer. I did like my dad taught me and started singing the National Anthem. As I was lifted out, I realized being forgotten was second nature to me. My biggest fear was being found.
Ooof, I really feel this one. Your final line is so powerful.
DeleteWOW, Nicole. This is stunning! "quiet, shiny dark", the turn in the final line. Gosh, I hope you keep going with this one.
Delete