Wednesday 13 April 2011

NaPoWriMo, Day 13

It's day 13, and I have 11 poems. I didn't write a poem yesterday because I wrote several short poems the day before, and today so far has been consumed by teaching; I'm hopeful, though, of doing a little writing this evening. How are others doing?

5 comments:

  1. Hazel5:33 pm

    I am writing something every day, sometimes a revision, sometimes notes for something new, sometimes a first draft... hurray I am no longer afraid of the start of writing that - it wont BE anything... that I cant do anything today... Worth the struggle. Here is a Haiku style piece. :

    fresh cherry blossom
    in my garden's third year
    and I am sixty.

    5/04/2011

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  2. Joanne Limburg

    Managed one a day so far, some very short, others towards a book of children's poetry I'm writing. Here's one that's neither, slightly the worse for formatting - and haste:

    You Ask Me Why


    Somewhere, more a notion than a place,
    an angel squats, a cosmic civil servant
    of great power, who never shows his face.
    His function is to pick up excrement
    in handfuls from the trough in front of him,
    and then, with supernatural strength, to fling it
    over his shoulder, so that it flies at random
    through creation, till something takes a hit.

    It doesn’t matter what you do, or think,
    it’s just a case of where you are and when:
    some never find out what it means to stink,
    most punters need a sluicing now and then,
    still others get a shit-shower every day,
    and that’s just how it’s always been, OK?

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  3. I ran out of steam after producing these two on Sunday. They are even less prepossessing than the previous attempts - so I'm presenting them as In Progress , to at least show myself I'm still trying - and I hope I will feel my way into tightening them up in due course. The first, being about a jazz trio (albeit with an ever-changing line-up) uses 3- or 6- word lines as a slight structural discipline. Will try again in the morning to continue the self-portrait series.



    GIUFFRE, BROOKMEYER, JIM HALL


    A valve trombone can also do
    the tailgate thing –
    and as I write I see
    a group in tight black bombazine
    suits and inconspicuous
    bowler hats they would I believe
    call derby
    entertaining
    on unpolished brass
    genteel white ladies
    in a teagarden –


    but in Brookmeyer’s hands the instrument
    plays smooth as an alto saxophone
    The Train and the River running
    side by side. The green country
    sound of guitar dreams lyrical into
    damp shade and lush grass stalks.






    “BOTH SIDES - ALL THE SIDES”
    a 5-day self-portrait


    Day 1


    He wanted to be a vagabond,
    a swashbuckler, not care
    if the hairbrush went in the butter
    in the frypan on the shelf, paint
    big rangy abstracts, hitch his way
    off to Bolivia, to the Pyrenees:
    instead he went for security, sat
    for thirty years in a job, saw himself
    a little grey man in a grey suit
    and an invisible pre-sixties bowler hat.

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  4. Hey Carrie, recently discovered your site. Specifically, the post with 30 new writing prompts! Just for kicks, thought I would share the first-fruits ;]

    (This is the first prompt...10 words from page 29 of the nearest book.)

    Nervous. Selfish. Aim. Saturday. Nonsensical. Flight. Failures.

    She'll tell you what's nonsensical,
    flight. One flies through the air,
    the result of nervous selfish aim
    and the other failures to a waiting
    stream, wings helpless this Saturday.

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  5. Another of those (triumphs, decade, darker, problem, godlike, break/staff, so-called, bound,crow, mark)

    POCKET GUIDE

    In the darker place near my heart
    I’ll take a crow bound with raffia
    to keep him still but not quiet
    on my bumpkin explorations.

    A decade should suffice to break him in:
    imagine the feeling of godlike triumph
    when the so-called problem of his struggles
    will be overcome and I can walk the city streets,
    him perched wing-free, a hoarse but docile filial
    on my ebony staff calling out landmarks.

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