As Maureen Thorson, our fearless prompt leader says, “Here’s one from the archives” (Napowrimo). The planets are acting out right now! It’s Mercury Retrograde, among other unusual circuits. It could be that or maybe just day 24, a book launch on the horizon (for my book Rainbow Warrior), gardens to be planted, guests arriving, etc. etc., but whatever the reason, my muse has literally sat down and refused to budge. So, all to say, though I have been faithful to 2023 prompts until now, here’s one out of the archives, Poem-a-day, 2017. I think the prompt was doodling!
Slowly on prompt! This poem includes the point of view of the old house–in a manner of speaking.A surprise visit from a lightning rod suggests that it may become an important symbol in my rewrite.
Prompt from Napowrimo: “. . .our optional prompt for the day! Start off by reading Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s “Lockdown Garden.” Now, try to write a poem of your own that has multiple numbered sections. Attempt to have each section be in dialogue with the others, like a song where a different person sings each verse, giving a different point of view. Set the poem in a specific place that you used to spend a lot of time in, but don’t spend time in anymore.”
Poem removed by Poet Voice for revision and publication elsewhere.
after Emily Dickinson’s “The Moon is Distant from the Sea”
The moon is sister to the sea,
with amber hands she leads the
seeming docile sea along appointed
sands. The sea never
misses a degree, obedient
to her sister moon’s eye, she
comes just so far toward the town &
just so far goes away.
Oh, yours, the amber moon &
mine, the distant sea, obedient
to the least command
the seas impose on you & me.
Hello readers! Have I stolen Emily Dickinson’s poem? No, today’s prompt requires it. You will see the prompt below as well as the original poem. In the original by Dickinson, she made the sea male and the moon female. Although both entities in nature are without a specific gender, I couldn’t imagine the sea as male, so I revised it to make the moon and sea sisters! (poetic license!) Jacquelyn
“Today’s prompt. . .is a variation on a teaching exercise that the poet Anne Boyer uses with students studying the work of Emily Dickinson. As you may know, although Dickinson is now considered one of the most original and finest poets the United States has produced, she was not recognized in her own time. One reason her poems took a while to gain a favorable reception is their slippery, dash-filled lines. Those dashes baffled her readers so much that the 1924 edition of her complete poems replaced some with commas, and did away with others completely. Today’s exercise asks you to do something similar, but in the interests of creativity, rather than ill-conceived “correction.” Find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it!”
From the list, I chose “courage” because we all need so much of it everyday! Let’s hear it poets! Does it take courage to write a poem-a-day in April?
Prompt for Day 21 from Napowrimo: “Last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. Begin by reading Sarah Gambito’s poem “Grace.” Now, choose an abstract noun from the list . . . , and then use that as the title for a poem that contains very short lines, and at least one invented word.”
Poem removed by Poet Voice for revision and publication elsewhere.
To appease my grumbling muse, I decided to delve into a stanza pattern to write today’s poem. The “Terza Rima” (a poem with interweaving rhyming triplets or tercets) is a form that poets have used for long poems or as a stand alone short 3 line poem. One famous example of Terza Rima with three tercets and a final couplet is Shelley’s of “Ode to the West Wind.” It has a specific rhyme pattern that goes like this: 1,2,1; 2,3,2; 3,4,3;4,5,4 and the couplet uses the rhyme sound from the central line of the preceding triplet, so it goes 5, 5.
Shelley’s poem has five sections, however, and you may want to check it out here.
Below is my poem, “Found by a Future Scientist,” that responds to Napowrimo’s prompt “Have you ever heard someone wonder what future archaeologists, whether human or from alien civilization, will make of us? Today, I’d like to challenge you to answer that question in poetic form, exploring a particular object or place from the point of view of some far-off, future scientist? The object or site of study could be anything from a “World’s Best Grandpa” coffee mug to a Pizza Hut, from a Pokemon poster to a cellphone.”
Found by a Future Scientist
What thing is this,
a pendulum moving to and fro
in perfect rhythm, yet tedious?
The weighted piece—a rod of sorts—must go
ticking, tocking, ticking, tocking torture.
My science sees no purpose in this show.
Back and forth ticking I must endure
as I study this strange artifact.
In this task, my expertise looks amateur.
Yet, after hours, days, months—to be exact,
I warm to this past piece as treasured bric-a-brac.
I definitely got carried away with this poem as my idea took me on a long ride. I used gems in alphabetical order and then had to figure out a way to make a poem out of it, simply titled “Gems.”
And here’s the prompt: “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem in which the word choice follows the words/order of the alphabet. You could write a very strict abecedarian poem, in which there are twenty-six words in alphabetical order, or you could write one in which each line begins with a word that follows the order of the alphabet. This is a prompt that lends itself well to a certain playfulness. Need some examples? Try this poem by Jessica Greenbaum, this one by Howard Nemerov or this one by John Bosworth.”
The Academy of American Poets defines “Erasure poetry” as “a form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains.” (poets.org)
It seems to me that erasure poem could be considered a form of “negation”–the challenge of today’s prompt explained by Maureeen at Napowrimo: “Today’s prompt is a poem of negation – yes (or maybe, no), I challenge you to write a poem that involves describing something in terms of what it is not, or not like.”
Poem removed by Poet Voice for revision and publication elsewhere.
Today’s prompt is another rewrite. Thorson says: “And now for our (optional) daily prompt. Hopefully, this one will provide you with a bit of Friday fun. Today, I challenge you to write a parody or satire based on a famous poem. It can be long or short, rhymed or not. But take a favorite (or unfavorite) poem of the past, and see if you can’t re-write it on humorous, mocking, or sharp-witted lines. You can use your poem to make fun of the original (in the vein of a parody), or turn the form and manner of the original into a vehicle for making points about something else (more of a satire – though the dividing lines get rather confused and thin at times).”
My attempt at the prompt on day 14 has an interesting twist. The poem is not so famous, but the poet is—Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In 1856, Barrett Browning published Aurora Leigh, a “novel in verse” that follows the title character, an aspiring poet, through several pot-boiling twists. In one revealing passage, Aurora’s cousin and would-be suitor, Romney Leigh, summarizes his attitude toward her and women writers of that era in a passage that I quote below. I rewrote that passage.
So, I rewrote the poem from a feminist perspective and titled it “Woman Poet Extraordinaire”
Woman Poet Extraordinaire
Therefore, this same world
that you understand and influence
with your strength and courage will
always be changed by you and
women of the world. Women brave,
strong, and at work in the world
will always change it by their very presence.
You are more than a doting mother and a wife!
You are more than a sublime Madonna ,
a seductress, or an enduring saint.
You are divine!
You are woman!
You are leader, artist, writer,
inventor, healer, builder.
You are poet extraordinaire!
Jacquelyn Markham (4/14/2023)
Here’s the original in which her cousin addresses her, knowing of her aspirations to be a poet:
Therefore, this same world Uncomprehended by you must remain Uninfluenced by you. Women as you are, Mere women, personal and passionate, You give us doting mothers, and chaste wives. Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints! We get no Christ from you,—and verily We shall not get a poet, in my mind.
The Poetry Foundation explains: “As starkly sexist as the above passage might seem to contemporary readers, the idea that women and female experience were incompatible with poetry continued to hold sway for the next 100 years, until second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s brought a political and cultural watershed. Women fought for equal treatment and civil rights; meanwhile, women poets created structures to support one another while profoundly changing poetry itself.” (www.poetryfoundation.org)
We only have to look at the last two United States Poet Laureates to see “women poets extraordinaire”! Currently, Ada Limon and former, Joy Harjo. Two of my favorite poets.
I once wrote dialogues between the poet and the poem. This prompt is a little like that kind of dialogue, but even a bit more complicated. Here it is from Maureen at Napowrimo: “I challenge you to write a poem that addresses itself or some aspect of itself (i.e., “Dear Poem,” or “what are my quatrains up to?”; “Couplet, come with me . . .”) This might seem a little “meta” at first, or even kind of cheesy. But it can be a great way of interrogating (or at least, asking polite questions) of your own writing process and the motivations you have for writing, and the motivations you ascribe to your readers.”
So here we go. I could go on forever. . .
Whitehall Plantation Oak, painting by poet
Poem removed by Poet Voice for revision and publication elsewhere.
Maureen Thorson, the master mind behind Napowrimo says: “This prompt challenges you to play around with the idea of overheard language. . . Now, write a poem that takes as its starting point something overheard that made you laugh, or something someone told you once that struck you as funny.”
The overheard language around me today did not make me laugh or inspire me, so I dipped into a journal and found another one of those many prose practice writings and transformed it (I hope) to a poem.
Rain Again! Yes!
Rain Again!
“Oh no, rain again,” someone said.
Rain, Spain, main, shame, blame—
my mind reels. What rhymes
with rain? The rain I am grateful for
as it nourishes my flowers, my garden,
plants, trees, birds, fills the rivers.
A rain dance, my tarot card proclaims I can do
as an archetypal witch, so I claim the rain power.
Poet Voice 