This is my third week of creations for National Poetry Writing Month (or NaPoWriMo). Each day Maureen Thorson posts poetry resources (worth checking out) and an optional prompt. I quite enjoy the prompts though don’t always have the time to engage them. I include the daily prompt after each poem and if i’ve not used the prompt i note this with a parenthetical “UNUSED.”
I hope you enjoy this week’s attempts. (If you’re so inclined, I am publishing each of these daily on my tumblr - which i use as a commonplace book.)
APRIL 15, 2024
Wunderkammer
Once the world was filled
with fairies, fae creatures, little folk
all of whom sang all the time
the world is abundant and
we are all connected
Forests were cut down
wolves slaughtered
bears banished
the wonder of the world
enclosed in rooms
wild places paved over
The Fae found a new home
staring from small windows
wild carnival of images
fairy eyes peeking out
transporting messages again
reminding of connection again
an endangered species
optional, as always! Today, we’d like to encourage you to take a look at @StampsBot, and become inspired by the wide, wonderful, and sometimes wacky world of postage stamps. For example, while it certainly makes sense that China would issue a stamp featuring a panda, it’s less clear to us why the Isle of Man should feel the need to honor 2001: A Space Odyssey in stamp form. From Romanian mushrooms to Sudanese weavers to the Marshall Islands getting far too excited over personal computing, stamps are a quasi-lyrical, quasi-bizarre look into what different cultures (or at least their postal authorities) hold dear.
And if you’re not on or able to access the @StampsBot account, fear not! You may find an inspiring stamp or two by perusing the online “International Philately” (say that three times fast) exhibit from the National Postal Museum.
APRIL 16, 2024
This Table
used to be huge
big enough
for a family
of six
Oak
three feet by five
rounded ends
and heavy as
Oak
In the middle
a gash
Dad
was the head, of course
my baby sister to his left
then mum who chose to sit
on the side for ready access
to stove and countertop and sink
I, the eldest child, sat across from
dad
then my brother then
my other sister and back to
Dad
The gash
is one inch by half an inch
Huge, I tell you.... huge
my father seemed miles away
breakfast, lunch, and homework
fish on fridays
sunday night roast beef
with Yorkshire pudding
and he liked to talk
a lot
That heavy oak
has now followed me
for 40 years
dining table, office desk
drafting table, bookbinding
work bench
I have refinished the top
twice
The gash remains
If made in flesh
it would have required more
than stitches
It is the width
of a chair leg heavy
oaken chair
that I stopped at the cost
of a sprained wrist
a home
my father screaming
"You won't take my son
from me!"
"But then," I thought
who am I?"
more
than stitches
(optional) prompt, taken from our 2016 archives. Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does. The “surprise” ending to this James Wright poem is a good illustration of the effect we’re hoping you’ll achieve. An abstract, philosophical kind of statement closing out a poem that is otherwise intensely focused on physical, sensory details.
APRIL 17, 2024
Gassenhauer
An old story has it
that once God had fashioned
the body
Adam who, until that moment,
was only spirit
and content for all that
refused to enter the flesh
God's and Angel's persuasions
came to nought
Which is when God invented
music
something that could only be heard
with the body, ears and all
and thus was Adam's
spirit lured to incarnate
which begs the question:
what music?
For surely the Music of the Spheres
divine sublime celestial machinery
if heard by mortal ears
would be mere flesh's end
then what music?
Perhaps from amongst these
candidates:
Vivaldi's Alla Rustica - Presto
brief and energetic
might have drawn Adam quickly
but also too briefly
I've always imagined
Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt
Suite No. 1, Op. 46 - Morning Mood
is what woke Angels from their slumber
or the final movement
In the Hall of the Mountain King
as a call to a storied existence which
given humanity's fate, I can easily believe
(it is also my son's favourite)
But, while spring blossoms
brighten
this northern land
and bombs fall on the
lands where Adam first was
I hear the strains of Carl Orff's
O Fortuna and wonder if it is not
what is most true of our fate
around and around the Wheel
wonder turned terrible and
around again
But then I remember
this music educator
having lived the horror's of war
produced innocence-on-the-
cusp-of-the-bittersweet
Gassenhauer
which makes me
laugh and weep
simultaneously
and which Orff believed could draw
children to a lifelong love of music
and I believe he was right
and if children, then why not Adam
Yes
Gassenhauer is the one
optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that is inspired by a piece of music, and that shares its title with that piece of music. Need an example? Here’s A. Van Jordan’s “Que Sera Sera” and Adrian Matejka’s “Soave Sia Il Vento.”
APRIL 18, 2024
Cherita
Donning masks and capes and imagining starships
I slew dragons, and rode them, sought treasure, protected the weak
when I was too weak to escape my exile
But Wile E. Coyote taught me how to be killed without dying and Bugs
showed me how to make Superman's cape my own and where to find Green Lantern's ring
and now, despite bullies and tyrants, I have lived so very many lives
(optional) prompt! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker expresses the desire to be someone or something else, and explains why. Two possible models for you: Natasha Rao’s “In my next life let me be a tomato,” and Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo.”
APRIL 19, 2024
Sometimes we win
The boss said, "No, no, no, never!"
Then said nothing ... for months, then lied and lied some more
3000 union members said "NO!"
Marched in the snow, in the wind, in the rain
We shouted, we chanted, we sang, and we danced
and then we won
prompt – optional, as always! This one comes to us from Moist Poetry Journal, which posted this prompt by K-Ming Chang a while back: What are you haunted by, or what haunts you? Write a poem responding to this question. Then change the word haunt to hunt.
APRIL 20, 2024
History Lessons
One by one
the colonizers were sent home
(though some invaders stayed)
leaving blistered and battered
brand-new-nations that
sutured together survivors of genocide
wounds still oozing
Some nations said
"we had the bad luck
to be colonized
by the Portuguese" they
took the building plans, ferchrissakes
at least the British left
bureaucracy
revolution, protracted struggle, or,
in Canada's case: "pretty please?"
lines were drawn, maps were made,
no place untouched by the greed
of the few - desperation of the many
I grew up thinking "Them. They. It happened
over there..."
But I, too, am a child
of colonialism my family talks of
Le Grand Dérangement - "Deportation"
in English, or "Upheaval" but
derangement sounds more true something
my family escaped sort of but
centuries made us canadian, white, invisible
and my family is mostly gone now our history
consigned to fairy tales
but some of us remember
and we thank those that welcomed us
with generosity, sacred tobacco, and teachings
to survive the winters and the black flies
and we welcome those today
who also had no choice
but to flee their home so that we can
remember together our trials
together make a world
together learn to love again
optional prompt for the day challenges you to write a poem that recounts a historical event. In writing your poem, you could draw on your memory, encyclopedias, history books, or primary documents. If you’re interested in a little research, you might find interesting this collection of letters written during the American Civil War, or this collection of primary documents concerning South Sea voyages. Or perhaps you might find something of interest in digging through Europeana, an online clearinghouse of digitized materials from cultural institutions across Europe.
APRIL 21, 2024
Antinomies of Fuchsia
It began with Gormenghast
the pillars through which
I passed from youth
to majority
that story of decay, ambition, madness
was i leaving such
or travelling into it
Ever partial to fuchsia
I think i loved it before I knew it
to be a colour
I knew Lady Fuchsia Groan
though did not know how
but, of course, I had a crush
I laughed to
learn of the colour
it wrapped my sorrows
in beauty
carried mysteries
a great distance
I rescued from a fire
a sheet of fuchsia
mulberry paper
fragments folded
into my bookbindings
for decades now
still the mysteries
being carried
Besides great job, my only comment is that every country should feel the need to honor 2001: A Space Odyssey in stamp form!