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)