Tuesday, April 30, 2019

PAD: The Month in Review

Another April, another Poem-a-day Challenge, is history. Overall, I was fairly satisfied with the poetry I wrote this past month - a total of 37, including the haiku and the one-word minimalist poem I wrote on the 30th. In addition to those, there were two sonnets, a villanelle, a triolet, a double tanka, and abecedarian, a blank verse, a monorhyme verse, a prose poem, a bunch of free verse, and no less than three take-offs on Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of :Looking at a Blackbird". I wrote 638 lines of poetry, an average of about 21 a day. As I usually do, I've assembled some of my favorites of the month here, for those of you with neither the time nor energy to scroll through thirty days worth of blog entries. So here are my highlights, with reference to the prompts that inspired them: PA = Poetic Asides; NP = NaPoWriMo.


[Day 9: PA - "Love' and/or "anti-love"; NP - a list poem (inspired by the lists of The Pillow Book by the medieval Japanese writer Sei Shōnagon); plus word bank from The Sunday Whirl]


[poem deleted]


[Day 11: PA - a "dedication" poem]

[poem deleted]



[Day 12: PA - a poem entitled "The Art of ______"; NP - a poem about a dull thing you own, and why you love it.]

[poem deleted]

[Day 17: PA - a "reason" poem; NP - a poem that presents a scene from an unusual point of view.]

Thirteen Reasons You Should Look at Us Blackbirds

1. Because we are ominous,
    like crows and ravens,
    though we don't say "Nevermore."
   
2.  Because we weren't in that playground scene
     in The Birds (those were crows),
     but we could have been.

3. Because we don't guard the Tower of London
    (those are ravens),
    but we could.

4. Because in the colorful pageant of nature,
    our darkness is our brightness.

5. Because we can be striking.
    like our red-winged cousins,
    with sergeant stripes on their shoulders.

6. Because you shouldn't confuse us with starlings.
    They think they're pretty,
    but they look like oil slicks.

7. Because a group of us is a cloud,
    or a cluster, or a merl,
    not a "murder" like those dodgy crows.

8. Because when we swarm in the air,
    it's like a plotted equation
    performing a ballet.
    It's called a murmuration,
    and oh, it's a sight to see.

9. Because Paul McCartney liked us
    singing in the dead of night.

10. Because when we sit on a snowy branch
       it is a haiku.

11. Because four and twenty of us
      can be baked in a pie. (Oh, wait...)

12. Because you can pack up all your cares and woes
      and tell us bye-bye.

13. Because Wallace Stevens said so.



[Day 18: PA - a poem titled "Little ______"; NP - an elegy.]

[poem deleted]



[Day 19: PA - a "license" poem; NP - an abecedarian.]

Zero Tolerance

You
xenophobic
wall-building
violence-inciting
unrepentant
tyrant,
systematically
revoking
quintessential
policies,
ostracizing the "other",
normalizing
mendacity with a
license to
kill dreams,
justifying
immigrants
housed in cages,
glorifying
family separation,
egregiously
direct our
country
backward, like
an alphabet in reverse.



[Day 20: PA - a "dark" poem, NP - "write a poem grounded in language as it is spoken – not necessarily the grand, dramatic speech of a monologue or play, but the messy, fractured, slangy way people speak in real life." ]

[poem deleted]



[Day 22: PA - a "correspondence" poem; NP - a poem that engages with another art form.]

To a Young Musician

Dear Student,

I sit in the next room during your lesson
trying to come up with a poem
while you and your teacher distract me
with a flute duet by Kuhlau.

The two disciplines seem to clash -
your weaving arpeggios slide up against
my thumping iambics, till finally I give up
and let the music seduce me. I sink into
the couch's soft cushions, my notebook
lies open on my lap, my hand
relaxes and drops my pen to the floor.

There will be no poem this evening,
but I am still nourished, not from
the satisfaction of cobbling words together,
but from notes already composed,
perfectly read, and swirling in from the study
on a spring breeze. Thank you for the respite.
Thank you for your exquisite art.

Yours,
An Admirer



[Day 24: PA - a poem titled "Complete ______"; NP -  "Locate a dictionary, thesaurus, or encyclopedia, open it at random, and consider the two pages in front of you to be your inspirational playground for the day."]

Complete Guide to Page 427 of the Dictionary

What a flavourful, flawless fleet of entries,
fleshed out for the flexible mind.
For instance, "fleur-de-lis" is a stylized iris,
though the word derives from the French for "lily".
Fire consumed the Notre Dame spire, called a "flèche".
You "flay" the flesh off a person's back,
but you "flense" the skin off a whale,
and of course you "fleece" a sheep.
And I finally found the name for those
silly folded diamonds with messages
we fashioned as kids, that we called
fortune tellers. They're a form of "flexagon".
"F layer" is the top of the ionosphere.
"Fleishig" means made of meat in Yiddish.
And it's obvious that a Fleming speaks Flemish.
Fleas, mere flecks of insects, flit around here,
as in fleabag, fleabitten, flea collar, flea market.
And I learned everything I need to know about flax,
except why folks eat the seeds.
I knew a "fletcher" is an arrow-maker,
but I didn't know that a fledgling could be fledged
before it flew. And by the way, "flews"
are the flappy upper lips of a bloodhound.
Okay, enough. I feel a need to flee this page 
before you all fleer at me. (Look it up.)



[Day 26: PA - an "evening" poem; NP - a poem that uses repetition.]

Serenade

The colors shift red to blue, clouds form this evening;
it's in the bones - likely it will storm this evening.

Like damp laundry, humid air hangs on all of us;
even fans can't save us, it's so warm this evening.

Verandas, open porches may give some relief,
but the bugs revel - mosquitoes swarm this evening.

With distant rumble, lightning flashes cloud-to-cloud;
our cold drinks sweat, waiting to transform this evening.

And I, the sly guitarist, neatly tune my strings.
Damn the heat, my love - I will perform this evening.



Some other poems that get "honorable mention" and you may want to check out: 
The Worst (Day 2)
Frida Kahlo (con Collar de Espinas) (Day 4)
Thief of Time (Day 5)
Giving (Day 7)
Origin Juice (Day 11)
Six More Weeks of Zombies (Day 13)
State of Confusion (Day 14)
Like, Sonnet 18 (Day 27)












2 comments:

Manja Mexi said...

I'm excited to come across your poetry this month. Thank you for summing them up for us but I did read all of your poems and am very glad to report that I loved at least 20. Probably the most I enjoyed your #28 meta poem since I appreciate this kind of mashes and because there truly are numerous reasons why writing poetry.

All well to you and enjoy your fourth 17th year. I would never say this was your age before becoming aware of your grandparentness.

Greetings from Tuscany!

Bruce Niedt said...

Thanks so much for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed my poetry.