Originally posted here.
Another year’s half marathon come and gone. As I often point out, I prefer to do the half marathon because I like to sleep; consequently doing the full 24-hour marathon simply wouldn’t work for me, as it would take me at least a couple of days to get back to normal. Continue reading
Yesterday was the final day of National Poetry Writing Month 2019.
This year I followed two sets of prompts: napowrimo.net and POETRYisEVERYTHING. That’s right—I was writing two NaPoWriMo poems a day.
For the most part, I was successful. There was only one prompt I failed to come up with a poem for, and one day I combined the two prompts for a single poem; consequently, the final tally was 58 poems. That takes care of the quantity.
So, how did I do otherwise? I like Chris Jarmick’s assessment: Some excellent work. Some worthwhile failures. In fact, I’m setting aside worthwhile failures as a future book title.
My own assessment is mixed. I felt either boxed in or uninspired by many of the prompts; those poems suffered accordingly. To use a well-worn sports metaphor, my batting average was much lower this year. My Day 9 poem, where every line begins When I think about love, even makes me cringe a little. I think my Day 6 poem, about the word if, turned out the best. The rest fall somewhere in between.
Though I will continue to be posting new poems more or less daily in the meantime, I will be doing this again on a greatly condensed timetable very soon: the 2019 Poetry Marathon is coming up on June 22nd. Plenty of time for me to decide whether to stick with the half-marathon (12 poems in 12 hours) or go for the full marathon (24 poems in 24 hours) this time…
Thanks for following along.
(1 May 2019)
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As we head into the final month of this dumpster fire of a year—all feast or famine, with bouts of depression, more car problems, having to rebuild my website, and general disgust with the state of the world—I need to step back for a moment and reflect on the things I was able to accomplish.
Here we go:
Friday is September 1st—time for a new writing challenge. I think I am going to go with the thing I mentioned a couple of days ago—i.e., avoiding the word I, regardless of form or format. Will it be harder than May 2016’s verbless poem challenge? Stay tuned to find out. Continue reading
It has been a while since I last posted something that wasn’t either a poem, a ‘love note’ entry, or somehow not directly related to my self-publishing activity (the ‘Resistance Song of the Day’ notwithstanding). So, here goes… Continue reading
2016 ended up being a difficult year: work that didn’t materialize, illness, car problems, and the death of Lucy, the world’s greatest alarm cat. And that’s just in my little world.
So, I figure I need to step back for a moment and reflect on the things I was able to accomplish: Continue reading
Yesterday, I participated in my first poetry marathon. Well, technically the half marathon. Twelve new poems in twelve hours. This morning, I’m very tired.
The whole exercise was deceptively difficult—not that I thought it would be so easy, but when I sit down with my big sketchbook to write, I often will write three or four poems at a time, taking maybe twenty minutes or so. That’s what I was thinking would happen when I signed up. Continue reading
Ordinary Average Thoughts 