Once again I did participate in this year's November Poem-a-day Chapbook Challenge hosted by Robert Lee Brewer on the Poetic Asides website. Although for me it's not usually as intensive as the April Poem-a-day challenge, I try to get involved each year with varying degrees of success. The object is to have enough poems (preferably with a unifying theme) by the end of the month to publish a chapbook. Robert announces winners based to their manuscript submissions but does not publish them. That task is up to the individual poet. My best success was when I wrote poems with a baseball theme in November 2013, which turned into my 2016 chapbook, Hits and Sacrifices, published by Finishing Line Press. I also have submitted a manuscript based on the pandemic-themed poems I wrote last November, in a form called the hay(na)ku. That's been submitted for publication, and if accepted, will probably come out next year.
This year I wrote 38 haiku and senryu on a general theme of November and autumn. I tried to stick to Robert's daily prompts, at least tangentally. I doubt they will turn into a chapbook, but for what it's worth, here are some of what I think are the best ones I wrote this past month:
[Day 1: write a "correspondence" poem]
Dear November,
thanks for the feathery frost
paintings on my car
[Day 4: write a "party" poem]
dancing on cold feet -
who invited foggy breath
to this party?
who invited foggy breath
to this party?
[Day 7: write a "health" poem"]
I'm out of the woods
healthy once again, but now
the leaves are dying
[Day 8, first day of Standard Time: write a poem with the title "______ of the _______." I used the phrase in my first line.]
first
day of the change -
we wound all the clocks backward -
where did the sun go?
we wound all the clocks backward -
where did the sun go?
[Day 11, Veteran's Day: write a "memory" poem]
leaves cascade to ground
as I stop to remember
all of the fallen
as I stop to remember
all of the fallen
[Day 14: write a poem with the title "______ That." I used the phrase in my first line.]
who
would have thought that
she'd be in the food bank line
for a free turkey
she'd be in the food bank line
for a free turkey
[Day 19: write a "future" poem]
wild
turkeys wander
while
their cousins on the farm
face
a bleak future
[Day 22: write an animal poem.]
brown rabbit
standing, ears at attention
senses winter
standing, ears at attention
senses winter
[Day 24: write a "response" poem. This was a kind of response to my own haiku from Day 21.]
handing out hot meals,
angels in the soup kitchen -
cornucopia
[Day 27: write a "remix" poem. I wrote seven haiku that used words I previously used in other haiku this month. This one reused the words "foggy" and "umbrella."]
foggy morning -
I hold up an umbrella
as if it would help
