National Poetry Month / Poem-a-Day 2013

Hello, friends. Yes, yes. I know. It’s been almost a year since my last blog post. I’ve been bad. Bad blogger, BAD blogger.   ;-) The occasion for the resurrection of the blog is this: it’s National Poetry Month! And once again I’m going to try to write a poem a day during the month of April. Like last year, I’m taking on Writer’s Digest editor Robert Lee Brewer's “PAD challenge” (PAD for “poem a day”). Every morning in April, Robert will issue a prompt in his Writer’s Digest Poetic Asides blog . . . today, April 1, his prompt is to write “a new arrival poem.” Same as last year, I plan also to pay attention to Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompts (that smushed-up word, by the way, stands for National Poetry Writing Month, a now-international project she invented . . . imagine that!). Anyway, Maureen suggests, for Day One, writing “a poem that has the same first line as another poem.” Well, folks, here it is, just the first day, and I’m already cheating on prompts. Tsk-tsk. My poem below refers to new arrivals but they don't really arrive yet. Also, instead of using someone else’s first line as my own, I’m using that stolen line as part of my title. Close enough, though, don’t you think? Besides, it’s April Fool’s Day, right? So we’re just fooling around. April Is the Cruelest Month ... Or, Hoping 30 New Poems Will Arrive April’s blood curdling damnable expectation for gorgeous Homeric iambics just kills limpnoodled me. No OLD pantoums qasidas rondeaus senryu terzanelles . . . Ugh. Verse. Well? Xbox? Yu-gi-oh? Zoloft? —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] I’m really proud the opening line I’m stealing is from T. S. Eliot, because of his often-quoted dictum: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” So I’m stealin’ from the best, from the master who told us all to steal . . . alright! Did you notice there are 26 words in the poem, not counting the title? What might the number 26 make you think of? Yes! Each word in the poem starts with a letter of the alphabet, in order. To be technical for a moment, this kind of poem is called an abecedarian. Sometimes they are written with 26 longer lines starting with the ABCs in order. Wait, what’s that? I cheated? There's no word as limpnoodled, right? Well, yeah. April Fool’s! Cheatin’, stealin’, it’s all about maturity . . . Dr. Seuss and Shakespeare both made up flapdoodle words.   :-D Okay, that’s it for me for Day One. I hope you liked the poem, even the cheatin’ and the stealin’. In fact, I hope you enjoyed it because of the the cheatin’ and the stealin’! See you tomorrow for Poem Two. As always, ingat. (Filipino for “take care,” remember?) Ingat, everyone. Oh, I almost forgot . . . please comment below. I’d love to hear what you think. Looking forward to your comments! P.S.  Just a little show and tell before I go. I gave a reading last week at the University of Northern Iowa, and I’d like to show off the handsome flyer the good folks at the Center for Multicultural Education made to advertise my gig. Cool, huh? [Click the image to see a larger version.] Thanks for coming back to the blog, friends. Comment below, okay? See you tomorrow. Ingat.   :-) POEM-A-DAY 2013 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Day Ten ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day

Today, Robert Lee Brewer once again offers a “Two-for-Tuesday” set of prompts: "forest poem" or "tree poem." Do one or the other, he says, "Or you can dive right into the metaphor separating the two." Catherine gives us a clever little send-up of Emily Dickinson's "I never saw a moor" today; her poem even sports its own fake Johnson number, no less. And, of course, there's a tree! 10. I didn't do my chores Instead I climbed a tree And when my mother came to look She quickly spotted me. I found it very odd Since I was only seven That she thought I should be taught To clean the dirty kitchen. —Draft by Catherine Pritchard Childress     [do not copy or quote ... thanks] Over at NaPoWriMo.net Maureen Thorson mentions "a quote usually attributed to T. S. Eliot: Good poets borrow; great poets steal." For Day Ten then, she says, "let's stick to plain old stealing by writing poems with their first lines lifted from other poems." Maureen bringing up that Good Poet / Great Poet business reminds me that this quote (which isn't exactly what Eliot really said) leaves out perhaps the most important category: the Bad Poet. And even more important than that: the VERY Bad Poet. So, in honor of all BAD POETS and VERY BAD POETS, I offer this little ditty neither Maureen nor Robert probably saw coming. (Or maybe they saw it coming all too well.) In Memoriam My Dog Edgar Allan With sincerest apologies to Joyce Kilmer and the Little Bunny hopping through the forest I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. But I know I have seen a bee That chased my dog right up a tree. Now, he was tough, that little bee, And I was glad it wasn't me But Edgar Allan foo-foo'd, see? And THAT, my friends, is Poe-in-tree. —Draft by Vince Gotera     [do not copy or quote ... thanks] Didja notice how I got both "tree" and "forest" in there? Whoo-eeee! Not to mention of course stealing Joyce Kilmer's most popular opener. I was almost tempted to sprinkle in some dashes and capitals to mash up Dickinson with Poe, Kilmer, and Little Bunny Foo-Foo! But even I have my limits — though I can imagine some people saying they wouldn't have thought so. Our featured blog today is No Vacation from Speculation by Jessica McHugh. On April 5, an enterprising facebook member created "Bad Poetry on Facebook Day." Jessica pounced on this opportunity to use "bad poetry" as her prompt for Day Five and wrote several hilarious Bad Poems, some on the facebook event page and others on the blog. Classic. Jessica is a well-known speculative fiction writer who has written horror fiction, alternate history, and epic fantasy, publishing ten books in the last three years. As you will see from her blog, Jessica is also a fine poet . . . she doesn't only write bad poems! Okay, friends, we're 1/3 through the month. Who'd a-thunk it? Leave a comment below, won't you? I got rid of that word verification malarkey today, so it's much easier to comment. Ingat. POEM-A-DAY 2012 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30