Re-posting this poem from April 2013 (but with the edits I later made for Journalism) for Election Day. The original post can be found here.
National Poetry Month
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #30 (April 30, 2013)
Today’s prompt: “Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite.”
For this particular exercise, I chose to work with “Nagarkot“, a poem by David Sylvian, from his book Trophies: The Lyrics of David Sylvian (1988, Opium (Arts)). Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #29 (April 29, 2013)
Today’s prompt is to write a poem using at least five words from other languages. I spent five years living in Tokyo after college, so I decided to just try writing something in Japanese. Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #28 (April 28, 2013)
Today’s prompt is to write a poem based on a color. I chose yellow… Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #27 (April 27, 2013)
Think of a common proverb or phrase — something like “All that glitters is not gold,” or “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Then plug the first three words of the phrase into a search engine. Skim through the first few pages of results, collecting (rather like a poetic magpie) words and phrases that interest you. Then use those words and phrases as the inspirations (and some of the source material) for a new poem.
The first two things that came to mind proved to be useless, since the first three words could be completed only by the next two or three words in the phrases. Then I found something much better, much more open-ended—and every line comes from the search results… Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #25 (April 25, 2013)
Today’s prompt is to write a ballad. I can do that… Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #24 (24 April 2013)
I hate today’s prompt: use anagrams from my name. The suggested anagram generator came up with a bunch of crap, half of which didn’t resemble actual words (the other half seemed to rely inordinately upon the word “jinn”). So, I winged it. I hate the results—but there it is… Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #23 (23 April 2013)
Today’s writing prompt: triolets. Eight lines; iambic tetrameter; lines 1, 4, and 7 the same; lines 2 and 8 the same; ABaAabAB rhyme scheme.
Not sure how closely I hewed to the particulars of the form, but I gave it a shot—several shots, actually. (The second one starts with a line from a poem by Emily Dickinson.) Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day 22 (April 22, 2013)
Ignoring today’s prompt; writing a pastoral poem doesn’t interest me. Continue reading
National Poetry Writing Month: Day #21 (21 April 2013)
Ignored today’s prompt, which involved “re-writing” a poem called “Lines for the Fortune Cookies“. Not so interested in that.
Instead, I leave you with a brief impression from a function I attended last night that apparently did not get going until well after I’d left and turned in for the night… Continue reading
Ordinary Average Thoughts 