I'm really proud of the selection of poems and poets I was able to gather for The Rumpus project. I got good poems from a wide variety of poets--I discussed that variety here--and had a strong month in terms of reviews and interviews as well, something I hope will carry over into the rest of … Continue reading Some Post-National-Poetry-Month Thoughts
Day 30
So, I made 29 out of 30 days for the month, which is pretty damn good, I'd say. I could go back and bang something out for the day I missed, but it's just not worth it to me. Today's prompt was to write a letting go poem, and I thought about one of the … Continue reading Day 30
Day 29
I don't want to say I'm mailing it in here at the end of NaPoWriMo, because I'm trying, but the prompts just aren't sparking much in me. Plus, as this poem illustrates a little, it's the end of the term, which means I'm burnt from the work and facing a pretty significant workload between final … Continue reading Day 29
Day 28
Today is supposed to be an end of the road poem. I've written a lot of poems about specific roads, but they're always about the motion, the travel--the Overseas Highway, US 50 in Nevada, etc. So I reached back into my memory and pulled out the cemetery roads that were everywhere in south Louisiana when … Continue reading Day 28
Day 27
No poem yesterday--just couldn't get into the prompt. Maybe I'll find something to go with it today, but I can't say I'm all that worried about it. Today's options were to write a hopeless or a hopeful poem. This one isn't really hopeless, but it does look at a discouraging situation that anyone who's ever … Continue reading Day 27
Day 25
Prompt for today was to write a poem inspired by a song. This is even harder to do well, in my opinion, than an ekphrastic poem, just because music is so ubiquitous and so often repurposed that to do it in a poem seems cliché from the start. And it's also very easy to come … Continue reading Day 25
Day 24
Today's prompt was for an evening poem, so I went with a metaphor of balanced equations, an evening out as it were. The initial image comes from the park where Amy and I took a walk this afternoon. Some men were sitting under a group of pine trees on a blanket, and a very brave … Continue reading Day 24
Diversity in Voices
In a very powerful piece in the Guardian, Bidisha writes about how she's tired of being the token woman in the British arts scene, and about how women are consistently underrepresented in reviews, on panels, and in other venues. Her numbers speak for themselves: "I felt it [nausea] when I saw this week's edition of … Continue reading Diversity in Voices
Day 23
Today's prompt was to write an exhaustion poem, and given the time of the semester, and the length of my Thursdays, it would have been pretty easy to go with physical exhaustion as a topic. But I also felt like that would come off as self-absorbed whining, especially given that my current job is far … Continue reading Day 23
Day 22
Just jammed this out in the break between classes. It's an earth poem, and that's really all I think I need to tell you about it. It's pretty straightforward. I knew that learning the Greek alphabet while in the fraternity would pay off one day. Earth is not alpha and omega; more like iota and … Continue reading Day 22
Another Poem to Love 