For this early-bird poem, I followed the napowrimo.net prompt—sort of. Instead of a self-portrait as a historical or mythical figure, I made myself the figure in a photograph I took in January 2009 of a man standing in a graveyard.
NaPoWriMo
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 30
For Day 30, I went off-prompt, as they say. Instead of the Napowrimo.net prompt to engage with a strange fact, I opted to go with the prompt posted on Chris Jarmick’s POETRYisEVERYTHING blog, which involves writing a poem of 8 to 12 lines, with the odd-numbered lines being borrowed from poems I have written over the last 30 days, and the even-numbered lines being new lines written for this poem, with at least one of these new lines including something blue. I made three attempts at this; I couldn’t figure out which one I wanted to post, so I made this a three-part poem and used all of them.
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 29
The Napowrimo.net prompt for Day 29 is to ‘write a poem based on the Plath Poetry Project’s calendar. Simply pick a poem from the calendar, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.’ I chose to work with ‘The Rabbit Catcher’. I applied the approach from the Day 18 prompt, going line by line from the last line of the poem to the first, responding to each line along the way. (Oh, and nobody should be concerned. Yes, things have been difficult, but the first stanza is about my feelings about wearing neckties.)
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 28
The Napowrimo.net prompt for Day 28 is to ‘draft a prose poem in the form/style of a postcard.’
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 27
The Napowrimo.net prompt for Day 27 is to pick a tarot card and write a poem about ‘the images or ideas that are associated with it’. My poem is inspired by the Two of Cups, and partly influenced by side 1 of David Sylvian’s Brilliant Trees album.
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 26
The Napowrimo.net prompt for Day 26 is to write a poem that engages the five senses.
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 25
The Napowrimo.net prompt for Day 25 is to write a warning label for yourself.
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 24
The Napowrimo.net prompt for Day 24 is to write an elegy. This is always tricky for me, at least when it comes to prompts. These last five years or so, I have used poetry to mourn all sorts of things in my life—but this almost always came about as a natural response to an event or a memory. So, I opted for optimism with this poem.
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 23
The Napowrimo.net prompt for Day 23 posed a bit of a challenge for me, since I spend a lot of time alone. So, as I have done a few times these last few weeks, I turned to the movie American Splendor for inspiration. I borrowed a couple of lines from the film, but mainly I adopted some of the speech patterns from both the film and the comic, and combined them with things I have either thought or said…
National Poetry Writing Month 2018, Day 22
The Napowrimo.net prompt for Day 22 brought out the contrarian in me…
Ordinary Average Thoughts 