Today we have reached the end of madhousing and voicing, today some of you should be proud overachievers who have written a poem every day in April.
I have the honor of closing the door and handing out the awards. Today it’s time to talk verbs.
Verbs turn the wheels and are so much more interesting than other word classes.
Alas the world of words is filling up with things, we have warehouses filling up with objects. Innate things and passive they sit there, waiting for way to few verbs to put them in action.
But there is a solution called verbing. The word verb is a noun, but verbing a noun turns noun into a verb. You can do the same with almost any noun… just try it.
How do you elevator, firework or butterfly? Or can you say butterflew if it’s over?
Verbing is a great tool for imagery and metaphors too. If we firework is it from rage or in orgasm?
Use your poetic license decide for yourself and play. Take some nouns and use them as verbs and put them into a poem. Unlock all the objects, let them dance, let them swirl.
It's day 29 of NapoWriMO, and I want to offer congratulations to all who have made it this far, and to all who have tried.
This isn't the end, but the end is just around the corner. That's what I'd like us to write about.
Sometimes, the moment just before something ends is as poignant as the actual ending. One could write about the Twin Towers on 9/10, with business going on as usual, never knowing what the morning would bring. Or, one could keep the focus much smaller, and write about a love affair about to end, but which hasn't actually ended just yet.
"When your rooster crows at the break of dawn, Look out your window and I'll be gone. You're the reason I'm traveling on. Don't think twice, it's all right." --Bob Dylan
In the above example, Dylan's character hasn't left yet, but knows he's about to.
"Don't look so sad. I know it's over, But life goes on, and this old world will keep on turning. Let's just be glad we had some time to spend together... There's no need to watch the bridges that we're burning." ---Kris Kristofferson "For The Good Times"
Here, a man talks about life going on, but a bittersweet ending is about to happen first.
Maybe you'd like to write about the winding-down of a great performer. In 1935, baseball legend Babe Ruth had been let go by the famed New York Yankees, and was playing out the string with the lowly Boston Braves. The Babe was old and fat and knew the end was near. But one day he went out and hit three home runs in a game, one of which was one of the longest he ever hit. It wasn't his final game; he appeared in a handful more, without remarkable result. But for that one day, he was like the candle that burns brighter just before guttering out.
So let's write about almost-endings. Endings that haven't happened yet, but are surely close at hand. No restrictions on length or form, but do make it a new poem.
Fashion Me Your Words In April around 'Destructive Weapons'. We are not using them here, only wrapping our thoughts around them, and FOLDING them into Poems.
The poetry Form required is The Fold
SO
Your challenge today toads, is to Let your words FOLD INTO POEMS ABOUT DESTRUCTIVE WEAPONS.
Constraints! The Fold [guidelines]
1. 11 lines
2. The end phrase of Line 1 repeats at Lines 5 and 11
3. The rhyme of line 1 continues through in every other line
4. There MUST be a reference to nature and how it affect you the poet
5. More in depth instructions HERE
Congratulations for those of us who have successfully written every day in April! Today is day 27.
I've always adored children's artwork and I recently attended an exhibit which highlighted some pieces that have received awards this year. They range from elementary school through high school. I have not posted their names as it is the internet and I did not feel comfortable doing so, but I was allowed to photograph these images. Please feel free to write more than one poem but this time I am asking for original poems only. Thank you.
You know the drill - link up below with your original post (not your entire blog) and be neighborly and visit your fellow poets.
Image copyrighted. Isadora Gruye Photography. Reprint only with permission.
Greetings Garden Dwellers!
I’m here with an Out of Standard challenge to keep the momentum going as the end of April approaches.
Today, we’ll visit a common form called the list poem, and we’ll put a teeny twist to it just to keep things interesting.
What is a list poem?
A list poem is simply that. A list or inventory of items, people, places, or ideas. They often involve repetition.
From Walt Whitman to Dr. Seuss, poets have used the list format as a way to break free of traditional expectations and conjure forth some powerful work.
Your challenge…
Write a list poem of five. Five of anything. Five things you need at the grocery. Five people who got exactly what they had coming. Your five favorite things overheard on the street. Five things you haven’t been able to throw away. You get the point. The mic is warm. The stage is yours.
For today's prompt I would like you to consider virtues and vices, or more specifically the Seven Deadly Sins or the Seven Heavenly Virtues. The Seven Deadly Sins are Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride. The Seven Heavenly Virtues are Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness and Humility. Your poem must include at least one of the names of the Virtues or Vices (and I know several of you will be tempted to use more than one - that's Pride right there).
As always, this poem should be new for this prompt. Be sure to visit your fellow Toads to see what they have created.
Welcome to the Tuesday Platform, your unprompted free-range
day for sharing poems in the Imaginary Garden. Please look up from your smartphone
and link up a poem. Then be sure to visit the offerings of our fellow writers.
And for those of you who would like some inspiration for today, I suggest you try your hand at Twitter Poetry i.e. to write a poem within twitter's text limit of 140 characters. On your mark, get set, go!
It always seems to me that a kind of madness takes over the toads during the month of April, as many of us attempt to write 30 poems in 30 days. We get to the fourth week and wonder why we set ourselves such an insurmountable task to begin with.
Since today is the anniversary of Shakespeare's birth and death, I have delved into the archives to read up on what he had to say about madness... a favoured theme in several plays and poems. I came across an interesting article, to be found HERE for those who are interested. I have also provided a few memorable quotes, but they are by no means prescriptive.
Laurence Olivier as Hamlet (1948)
Hamlet:
But come—
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd some'er I bear myself—
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on—
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 168 - 172
Theseus:
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
Midsummer Night's Dream Act 5, scene 1, 4 - 8
Macbeth:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Macbeth Act 5, scene 3, 40–45
Our focus for this prompt is The Mind: those troubles of the brain, shaping fantasies and antic dispositions which make us human.
Today I offer inspiration from poets born in April.
"A fresh and vigorous weed, always renewed and renewing, it will cut
its wondrous way through rubbish and rubble." William Jay Smith
"More matter with less art" Hamlet ~ William Shakespeare
"One can live without having survived." Carolyn Forche
"To write a blues song is to regiment riots and pluck gems from graves."
~ Etheridge Knight
“You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” ― Annie Dillard
Let these quotes lead to poetry. You can choose any form, or no form at all. I also used photos I felt worked with the quotes. You can draw inspiration from them also. I am including the license information from Pexels which applies to each image
CC0 License
✓ Free for personal and commercial use
✓ No attribution required
Please add your poem link to Mr. Linky and visit your fellow poets to read what today's post inspired.
Our animal cousins have never
been far from us, especially while we sleep. We only think we're different.
During homo sapiens’
million-year dream-time, animal and human were deeply enmeshed. Consciousness
was like a fish coming out of the water. Our dreaming selves dive back into the
furred and feathered and finned.
In those blending waters of the lower brain, distinctions
fade, similarities grow. A fish walks with our feet, a horse has a human head.
The snake slithers round Eve’s forearm and sets as golden arm-bracelet. Birds
caw our name from the trees, seals stare back with beloveds' eyes.
A shaman’s initiation ordeal meant being devoured, digested
and tutored in the ways of healing by one great animal or another. His or her
familiar was a totem topped by an eagle or bear or killer whale.
Is it the guilt of our killing
hunger that painted hyper luminous beasts in the Paleolithic caves, and chases
us at night, braying the Wild Hunt across the sky?
In myth, transformation from human to animal is a commonplace.
In Greek myth Cyncus, who grieved the fall of his friend Phaeton so deeply, turns
into a swan; Philomena’s rape and disfigurement (her tongue is ripped out, to
prevent her from telling on her aggressor) transforms into a nightingale whose
song pierces the heart. Actaeon the hunter is turned into a stag while spying on
naked Artemis in her bath and then is devoured by his own dogs.
When human and animal pair, the
result is never sure. Pasiphae loved the Cretan Bull, and their union produced the
Minotaur. Zeus seduced the maid Leda in
the form of a swan, and Leda gives birth to Helen, whose beauty launched a
thousand war-ships. Go figure.
Some gods are animals—Cernunnos the Celtic woodland god has the horns of a stag; the Egyptian god Anubis, guarder of graves, is a dog. The
Russian raven-god Kutkh releases the sun and the moon from its bill. Coyote and
Crow both enjoy a rich tradition of Native American folk-tales.
Mythic monsters are legion. A griffin is eagle and lion;
dragon a flying snake; Argus is a hundred-eyed giant and Cyclops a boor-bully
with just one. Scylla is a many-tentacled she-beast whose lair is just before the
mouth of Charybdis, the whirlpooling monster. Apollo gets his prophetic powers from killing the Pythian snake, and the
Medusa—the chick with those nasty adders for hair—petrifies anyone caught
in her gaze. (Literally.) When she is beheaded by Perseus, the winged horse
Pegasus leaps from her spilled blood.
Animals keep us guessing just what’s really going on. The
Devil is a poodle in Goethe’s Faust, the prince is a frog who may have already
joined us here at the Pond. One of my cousins, MacOdrum of UIst, runs with the
seal-tribe.You just never know.
For today’s NaPoWriMo challenge, pick an animal and write its
myth. You can riff on an existing tale or concoct your own. Put your beloved
pet in a folktale, or walk a mile in an animal's paws. Let’s honor the beasts who ensoul the Garden,
and the child in us all who can still see and talk and ride with them.
In Canada, we boast a legendary free-verse poet who
was always larger than life. Al Purdy, (1918 – 2000), had a literary career
spanning 56 years. He produced 39 books of poetry, a novel, two volumes of
memoirs, and four volumes of correspondence. He has been called Canada’s
unofficial poet laureate.
He was born and lived in Ontario, but spent winters
in his later years, in Sydney, B.C. He was able to support himself with his
writing, and as an editor. He wrote in an A-frame, which has been preserved,
after his death, as a memorial to him.
He was a friend of Charles Bukowski, who once said, “I
don’t know of any good living poets. But there’s this tough son-of-a-bitch up
in Canada that walks the line.”
Al Purdy died as he lived – on his own terms. At 81,
dying of lung cancer, he chose assisted suicide, and exited the world, leaving
behind his wife, his substantial body of work, and his beloved A-frame. I’d
like to think he still visits that cabin.
Perhaps his most well-known poem is “Say the Names”,
which he wrote shortly before his death, an elegy to some of the beloved
place-names of his life, in this case locations in British Columbia. Let’s take a look:
SAY THE NAMES
by Al Purdy
say the names say the names
and listen to yourself
an echo in the mountains
Tulameen Tulameen
say them like your soul
was listening and overhearing
and you dreamed you dreamed
you were a river
Tulameen Tulameen
--not the flat borrowed imitations
of foreign names
not Briton Windsor Trenton
but names that ride the wind
Spillimacheen and Nahanni
Kleena Kleene and Horsefly
Illecillewaet and Whachamacallit
Lillooet and Kluane
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
and the whole sky falling
when the buffalo went down
say them say them remember
if you ever wander elsewhere
"the North as a deed and forever"
Kleena Kleene Nahanni
Osoyoos and Similkameen
say the names
as if they were your soul
lost among the mountains
a soul you mislaid
and found again rejoicing
Tulameen Tulameen
Our challenge is to write a poem in the spirit of “Say
the Names”. What are the names of the places that live in your heart: their
mountains, their rivers, their lakes or ocean shore, the small towns, the
deserts, the city streets?
Sing us a song of those places, those names. Let’s
sing out the places we love. I can’t wait to read your love poems to the places
in your heart.
Greetings to all poets, wayfarers and friends. We are halfway through the month of April, and I must admit it has been an incredible journey so far. I have long been in love with poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. There is something distinctly profound about the way she picks her words and phrases and the poem above is a perfect example.
For this 'Get Listed' edition I want you guys to come up with your own brief creation. Please keep your poems under 100 words. Choose one of the word groups (using all four words) that fits best with the mood/theme/personality of your poem.
canopy frost despair omen sensual
wander dawn blood wistful features
lightly pity guts crocus blue
spring change dark edge mouth
Choose your own form or write in free verse if preferred. I look forward to what you guys come up with. The link doesn't expire so feel free to write more than one poem. Please do visit others and remember to comment on their poems. Have fun!
