NaPoWriMo Marches On!

I feel like the world's worst blogger. How can I expect to have readership if no one knows when I'll post again? Once a month certainly isn't enough, yet I feel if I post daily or even weekly i won't enough to say to be interesting. I need to find the right balance.

Anyway, enough of that. Once again I'm doing National Poetry Month's Poem-a-day Challenge, and doing quite well, thank you - 26 poems in 22 days (and that's counting a themed group of three haiku as one). None of them will help win me the Pulitzer Prize, but as the estimable Peter Murphy says, "Give yourself permission to write crap." I hope there will be at least 5-10 decent poems, or poems with potential, contained in this batch. I'm participating in the Poetic Asides blog again this year, but frankly I haven't been real excited about most of Robert Brewer's writing prompts. They do get me started, though, I'll give them credit for that.

April is every bit the busy month I expected it to be. Sunday the 18th my friends Anna and Kendall and I went to New York to represent Kendall's Maverick Duck Press at a reading at ABC No Rio in the Lower East Side. It was - how should I say - interesting. The venue was a building that was a former "squat" and on the verge of being condemned, and the audience - let's just say they barely outnumbered the three of us. But they loved our reading and they PAID us for our appearance. That's right - PAID for reading poetry! Tomorrow night I read with the Quick and Dirty Poets at the Big Blue Marble on Carpenter St. in Philly, and next Friday the 30th our group has their monthly reading series at the Daily Grind in Mt. Holly, featuring Bill Wunder.

Music: Listening and downloading stuff - the "new" Jimi Hendrix (previously unreleased studio performance of new and cover material), the new Dr Dog, and a couple of "discovery" bands (for me, at least), The Dodos and Field Music. Keep an eye out for new albums by Caribou and New Pornographers.

Poetry: How about one of the poems I've written this month? This is about the late great poet Lucille Clifton:

Miss Lucille

We will miss you, Miss Lucille,
who paid homage to your hips

and made ladies proud of themselves
no matter what their size,

who wrote of indignities and injustice
to your people and to all people,

who I will always remember
meeting, your dignity and grace.

May your own boat carry you
to the “water waving forever”.

We will miss you, Miss Lucille,
but we will find you in your poems.